Picture this, you’re rummaging around a charity shop, you’ve perhaps looked at the books, rummaging through the clothes racks hoping to find an interesting jacket next to nothing, and then just out of curiosity take a look through a small stack of landscape paintings. The pictures are the sort knocked up by hobby-painters, no great works of art here, but probably created with a lot of enthusiastic, maybe as a result of doing a course or reading a book. But suddenly in amongst the lakes, and country scenes, there is a large brown comical-looking monster looming over the mountains...
Welcome to the art of Chris McMahon. This artist frequents garage sales, thrift stores and charity shops looking out for abandoned paintings. These forgotten works are then given another chance to be appreciated by the addition of a monster to the scene. The monsters blend into the original settings by carefully matching the paint used by the previous artist, for example, acrylic or oil.
I had so much fun looking at these pictures that I thought I would create my own version.
Instead of using original abandoned paintings, I thought I would create some natural scenes of my own with nothing much going on in them, and then see what I could get up when enhancing them. I thought I’d include a person in the scene as well, not really doing anything dynamic.
As well as making merry with the monsters and such like, I thought it would give me a good excuse to work on backgrounds.
On Chris’s site, there is a gallery of land monsters and another of sea monsters, so I thought I would create one picture for each. I didn’t quite make it to the sea, but the picture I went for included a lake, so that’s kind of close.
The Canoe Trip
For the first one, I created this scene of a woman just returning from a canoe trip. There’s nothing particularly exciting or interesting about this scene. As the paintings that Chris chose to use as his starting point were nothing spectacular, I thought I would also choose setting that were somewhat humdrum.
Once I’d created the initial picture to base it one, it was easy enough to drop different monsters into it. That’s the beauty of working with layers digitally.
To get a few ideas flowing, I thought I’d start with a mindmap.
Mindmapping ‘The Lake’
I colour-coded the mindmap to make it easier to refer to. I started off in red writing down some of the key areas of the scene. I then put down some possible ideas for each area. Finally, I made a a few comments in green.
Doodling out some thoughts
Working with a few of the ideas from the mindmap, I made a few random doodles to explore what they might look like. There was nothing organised or orderly about this process, it was just a case of doodling whatever came to mind.
Enter Zoltar The Unflappable
I immediately thought of adding a dragon to the background and I first toyed with the idea of having it stride alongside the shoreline. However, I thought a dragon in full flight was cooler, so I added Zoltar zooming along at low-level.
Sue had to cut her canoe trip short due to a pair of battling Giant Squid in the lake.
I really liked the idea of some sort of monster emerging from the lake, however, I wanted to avoid the obvious one of a Nessie-type creature, so I thought I’d wrack my brain for something a little different.
I’d drawn giant squid previously, so I thought I’d requisition this pair from a previous pic.
*When I was toying this, I ended up with ‘giant squirrel’ instead of ‘giant squid’, which come to think of it is even more interesting….maybe I should draw that one as well…
The Frizzy-Created Yerble
While out for a paddle, Sue was joined by a flock of the exceedingly rare Frizzy-Crested Yerble.
This last one was just a bit of pure silliness.
I first thought of having a group of pelicans take over the canoe. Then I thought about geese instead, as I’m rather fond of drawing them. However, I thought it would be even more fun to create an entirely new bird species altogether, and hence the ‘Frizzy-Crested Yerble came into existence.
In the first version of the Yerble picture, all of the action and attention was on the left side of the panel. I tried a new version zooming in and also stretching the picture slightly.
Once I’d created the initial picture to base it one, it was easy enough to drop different monsters into it. That’s the beauty of working with layers digitally.
Geese. Yes, I know that they’re not monsters, but I’ve always enjoyed drawing geese, so I couldn’t resist drawing this one.
I initially tried dropping some black silhouettes in but they seemed a bit too jarring. I recalled how when McMahon did his pictures, we was creatures to blend his additions in to the original setting, so as to make a seamless picture.
Not just monsters, but also a more comical effect
The tree
This was based on a fashion pose. Originally it was more portrait style, but I modified it into a landscape.
As with ‘The Canoe Trip’ scene above, I did a mindmap to generate some ideas.
Mindmapping ‘The Tree’
Doodling out some ideas
I immediately liked the pose of the Bigfoot, so I had to draw that one!
The Ent
I probably could have justified watching ‘The Lord of The Rings’ as background research. However, as I had a lot of drawing to do, it wasn’t the best time to watch a three-hour plus movie…
Enter Bigfoot…
I thought of having Bigfoot appear a little bigger and closer, but felt it works better if he’s slightly further back and the woman is oblivious to him.
The Giant Woodpecker
I’ve had a lot of fun creating some new bird species over the years. Although Giant Woodpeckers already exist, I thought that I’d exagerrate it’s beak for comical effect.
Over to you
So how can you apply some of these ideas to your own cartoons or art?
Find a cartoon or picture with nothing much going on in it. You can use an existing one or create something new. You can even borrow a scene from someone else and then modify it.
Mindmap some ideas of what you could add to the scene. If monsters are not your thing, or they’re really not appropriate for whatever it is you are creating, then think about what other bizarre things/objects you could add.
Doodle out a few of the resulting ideas from the mindmap. Don’t think - just doodle it!
Have fun creating whatever takes your fancy.
That’s it, I hope you enjoy the process as much as I did.
The above cartoons were so much fun to create, that I’ll have to do some more.
I highly recommend checking out Chris McMahon’s work, it’s given me a lot of pleasure - and I’m sure it will you too.
Check his art out at:
http://www.cwmcmahon.com/home.html
And here are a couple more of his monsters that I really liked.
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