Drawing Daily Monsters: Finding Inspiration in a Drop of Ink

1. Introduction: My name is Stefan Bucher. I'm a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, basically a highly-paid eccentric and I make monsters. I design books, I do movie titles, plush animals, I designed a theater Las Vegas recently. But monsters, that's why we're here today. Why do I love making monsters? The question alone, I mean that's I'm making monsters. So, what's not to love? The process of drawing for me, has always been a process of failing. Where I have an image in my head and then, as I put it on paper, the shortcomings of my hands become apparent. On the monsters, are a way of reversing that process, because I don't know what it's going to look like. I don't go into it with an idea of- it's going to be this character, it's going to be this thing. The whole thing is a process of discovery. We're here in my studio 344 Design. I've been drawing, ever since I can remember. I started drawing probably two or three years old and just never stopped. I always like when I can pull together a lot of different things from all over and make something that feels cohesive, and becomes a new thing. I think one of my favorite projects has been designing the Yeti for Saks Fifth Avenue. Because that was a combination of high-fashion and my character design, and the really serious stuff. So, the class today, is about showing you how you can create your own characters. I'm going to show you, how I create my monsters. I'll give you a little bit of a load on what tools I use. How to set things up to be most conducive to creativity or to just being in the moment with the drawing. I'm going to show you a few little tips and tricks about eye contact, and character posing. But really, it's just about giving you a method to creating your own characters. We're going to create a monster and in the process of creating it, we're going to find out what that monster is all about? What that monster story is? I hope you'll enjoy it. 2. Project: Draw a Daily Monster: So, what I want you to do is figure out what's the thing that you want to draw? What's the thing you want to create? As much as it's really just a goofy little character, a lot of fundamental design decisions go into that. How do you frame that character? How do you make individual elements pop? How do you guide the eye through the drawing? What motion does it suggest? What is that character story? You can already see in the way I'm talking about it now is that the entire process is discovering that story of this character. Figure out what it is that's unique to you that lets you express what you want to express, and lets you learn things, and explore things by really taking up this practice, which is almost like it's like a meditation. We're going to create a monster and in the process of creating it we're going to find out what that monster is all about. What that monster story is. 3. Gathering Materials: All right, so we're going to need some materials. The first thing you need obviously is ink. I like sumi ink, you don't need a lot of it. Any ink will do really. Sumi ink is great, that's my choice. India ink is great. Just regular writing ink whatever you like. Ink is better I mean watercolor is where I'd draw the line because that gets difficult to handle and gets washed out. You want something that gives you a really nice deep black. This works for me. You don't need a lot, I've had this canister which is six ounces. It's six ounce canister and I've had that probably for three or four years and it's still half full. You need really surprisingly little, and what I like to put it on is I get these little eye dropper bottles and I fill that up from the bigger canister because you really just need a few drops. So, that's step number one is you need the ink. Then obviously you're going to need pens, lots and lots of pens. For the main line work, I like these fabric hostile pens but stellar makes a good fine line or row trang, pilot pens sharpies doesn't matter what it is, it has to be black and I'll get into that I'll get into the reason for that in a little bit but trust me you're going to want nice black pens. Some thicker sharpies as well, you can use a ballpoint pen if you like just basically just have lots and lots of pens. You're also going to want pencils. I like just a nice mechanical pencils because you can get a nice sharp point with it, there also these pencils that are either ballpoint pen variety or just comes out like that. Whatever you like or you can have a good old-fashioned American number 2 pencil and sharpen that bad boy, I like these because they're less messy and I don't have to think about it pencils just have just have pencils and erasers, erasers also are going to be crucial. If you want recommendations, white big white erasers that's the brand I like, I like big white blocks of eraser and then just have some stuff around that you might use. Knives, rubber bands, pieces of paper, yarn doesn't matter because that might come into it and it's just good to have secret little MacGyver instruments around if an idea hits you. We'll get into that in a little bit and then white out liquid paper sometimes is helpful because sometimes you want to get somewhere where there's ink and you need there to be white, white out it's helpful to have. The big thing is paper. Don't buy fancy paper. Get the cheapest cheapest possible paper you can have because the whole point of this exercise is to be loose and to be focused just on the drawing and the creativity of what you're doing you don't want to worry about having this beautiful paper cuts I have paper love and so when somebody gives me this really wonderful handmade paper and I get all in my head about is destroying worth the sheet of paper that I'm drawing it on. Get around that question get the cheapest cheapest paper I just get a ream of copy paper from the store. That'll do you. You want to have no second thought about just crumpling up a piece of paper and not worrying about it. Big big factor at all this compressed air the compressed air is the secret ingredient of monster making. When I first started doing it, any brand will do by the way I mean this is I don't even know what this is it's a power duster it's because it's got the power to dust all right. Doesn't matter where you buy it doesn't matter the brand doesn't matter the size this is just what I ordered last time because it was the cheapest possible compressed air but that's really the secret ingredient because when we start blowing the ink, yes you can just use a cocktail straw and blow into it you get a huge headache from it and also, you're not going to be able to blow strongly enough and forcefully enough because getting a really good blast of air is what gives you that great dispersal pattern that makes the monsters work. So get one of those and lastly as for me to spread the ink I like an old toothbrush. You can use just Sumi brushes you can use any brush you have you can what up a Kleenex and just smear it on with that. Doesn't really matter for me I like the tooth brushes because they give me a really interesting way of putting the ink on with little streaks and it feels nice in the hand. It's getting harder to find these, sometimes your dentist will give you one that that has a flat front because some of the newer ones, i mean they all have a little sort of X pattern and little serrated edges which is great for your gums but crappy for making monsters. So if you find like at the 99-cent stores and if you find some cheap toothbrushes that have a straight edge that's really the optimal monster toothbrush. Right, and I've had this one probably for ten years I think it's a German toothbrush that I brought with me when I moved here. Things you're going to need today for the monster making: pencils, black pens, some color pens if you like, cheap cheap paper, copier paper, anything that doesn't not so cheap that the blades but just cheap paper. You're going to need ink and you're going to need a duster can, the duster can is really the big thing, with the one note that if you're in a space where you can't possibly get that or do that, we're going to be uploading the ink blots we're using today to the site so if you want to just download the ink blots that I've made, that's fine but the fun is real in making your own so I hope you're going to be able to get that material. 4. Creating Ink Blots: Okay. So, first thing is setting up your work space. As you can see I keep everything wide open. Make sure you have some room, and that's really all there is to it. I like to have my pens and little glasses so I can reach find what I'm reaching for, but not really necessary. For the purpose of demonstration I'm keeping it clean but don't feel like you have to have a pristine workspace, for this or for anything. I think it really is, thats just a procrastination thing sometimes you just have to really clear it off and go. Anyway, let's get started and make some ink blots. Get a little stack of paper going, and then prepare your ink. As I said I've liked these little eye dropper bottles. So, just unscrew that. Take a little of the mothership ink here, put that in. There you go. Screw that backup, and if you buy this like a buck or two each, get a bunch, because they also have a tendency to dry up, but they are super useful. So you can make your blots and a number of different ways and they all involve these duster cans. I'm going to break open a new one for you. Only because this has frustrated me in the past, when you first get it, there's a little safety up here that you have to break off. There you go. Comes with a little straw let you attach here, sometimes I cut a little bit shorter, but this way you actually do get a nice flow of air going. Alright. So, you can do the ink blot, in a number of different ways, the most basic thing is you just put down a little drop, and as you can see it's really not a lot, it's a tiny, tiny amount that I've now already smeared. That's okay. Because that's going to become part of the character maybe. That's the most basic ink blot. You can possibly do is just draw a little line of ink, spray on it, and you will immediately get this which could be horns, could be legs, could be a color, it could be any number of things. For the daily monster site, I usually film during the whole things, I would immediately start drawing on this. But we're talking more about the drawing process. So, what I'd like to do is just make a bunch of ink blots at the same time and then look which one speaks to me. So, we're going take this, put it aside, and make another one. Again, just very little, you can just see that I'm doing two or three little drops of ink. So, for beginners mistake as just putting a whole lot of ink on, and it's just a mess and it warps your paper. So, that right there could be any number of things. I'm going to just keep going, and I'm going to make maybe 1015 ink blots at the same time. I like using the toothbrush, and so the way I do it is I just take the eyedropper, and again put maybe three, four, five drops to charge the brush. Then put it down like that. You can immediately see how that's different. I want to take these out of the way because there's just flapping in the wind right now. So, you can see already how that's different with a toothbrush how you immediately get this very very heavy black shape, which is great. Again, it's going to make a bunch of these. The Ink does dry pretty quickly, so you have to keep recharging the toothbrush. Just try to make some interesting basic shapes. To start with, let's just talk a little bit about the technique for blowing the ink. Because it is, as it turns out there is a trick to it, which is, you need to get fairly close up on the ink. So, you put the ink down like this, and then tilt the can a little bit and really you can see I'm almost on the paper, and I'm also really pressing down on the nozzle. Let me show you how it works if you don't do it like that. Just so you can see what the difference is. So again, put down a little bit of ink, lay it down, so if I'm going from up here, you see what happens, which is not a whole lot. It's not very pretty. Whereas, if I'm going right here, all kinds of interesting things happened. Also ink will spill. That's all right, and that's why keep some tissues at hand, so you can just wipe that off, and no need to be too precious about any of it. It's on film so I'm trying to make it look nice. Right. So, let's do a few more of these blots. Don't spread the ink out too far, because you want there to be liquid for the can to move. You can, as you can see you can also do two or three ink blots on one page, and you can have several characters on each page. Sometimes it's nice when the toothbrush gets a little bit dried out because you get this nice little dry brush effect. You can see from that last one, it's almost dry already. Where it's glossy it's still wet and this other stuff, it needs a few minutes to dry. So, one of the nice effects of doing 1015 blots at the same time, is by the time you're done with the blowing, you also have some that are immediately ready to use. Now, that's nice don't don't over blow it, because I could totally blow on this and have more fiddly, frilly bits going off to the side, but there's already something really interesting about this that I like, sometimes leave it. Again, I'll do one of example of what hasn't worked for me just so you can see that. Because you can definitely over blow this guys. So, if you do this and then you blow it again, and you blow it again, and again, and again. Then you get very complex shapes that have contradictory motion. Because one of the things that's nice about the ink blots. Doing them the way I do them, is you pick up on the floor of the air and it gives you a nice organic liquid shape that could exist in nature. Whereas, this is, it becomes more contrived to me. But at same time you might look at this and go, "No, no, this is how I love to do it." In which case I encourage you to. Let's do one more big one with just ink. I'll show you what it looks like when you just have a tremendous amount of ink and it's too much. It just gets very messy very quickly. You get these very very heavy marks. Which can be interesting, but you will mess up your desk. You'll get the very heavy big shapes that take a long time to dry. It's not my personal taste, but you can go that route certainly. 5. Sketching Monsters: The next thing we're going to work on is finding some basic shapes. At this point, I'm just going to use a light pencil. I'm going to go through all the blots and just see quickly what comes to mind. The thing with the blots is there's a lot that they already suggests in their motion. I'd like to turn them around a few times and see what comes to me. With this one for example, the first thing I see is this could be some sort of snout or a beel, which will put the head roughly here. Then this would be the neck, and this would be the body. So, then maybe there's some legs that come out of here, and I really just like to do some very quick gestural studies that come from that. So, if these are the legs, then we have this nice line that starts from the head, goes through the neck and the spine, into the legs. So, this is all one long curve, as is this other leg that comes out here. So, that's the immediate thing that comes to mind. But maybe that's not the best, maybe it's actually the other way around where you have- maybe this is part of the mouth, and then the head is up here, and maybe this becomes the body and there's legs coming out of this sort of pod, and these other feet. I try to keep this part really loose, really light, makes sure that you can erase the lines easily. So, don't smash down your pencil and really get into the nitty-gritty. This is really just about kind of an immediate early pass to see what you see really. I like to work on a number of them at the same time, because sometimes the idea from one might go back to the other one. So, if I do a session like this, I try to just look at all the blots at the same time. Sometimes I immediately say something, and other times I look out at it like, "Maybe, not sure." With something like this, this could always be some sort of furry hat, or could be the beard for a character where you put the teeth right here. So, you immediately you would have this character, that's the easiest thing to do in the world its to say, "Okay, it's a beard," you have a body and you have the legs. Do that sort of thing. Arms up in the air, and you can see just how loose I am at this point. So, this is just really for figuring out what goes where. But I do this kind of monster a lot with the beard. So, I don't want to just do that, I want to see if I can do something that's a little more extravagant. This kind of S shape is always good for a nice bird. So, I'll put a big peak there, put the eye here maybe, put some legs on and then we'll add a sheet of paper down here to finish the legs. This is already nice as a tail, maybe he's got some plumage we'll put in later. So, that's the first one for that shape that comes to my mind, but again, maybe that's not it. It could also be- if I erase that a little bit, this could be the mouth. So, this whole thing could be the jaw line. So, this could be teeth here, complete the skull here and make that into sort of a ponytail, have the eye here, put more teeth in and tongue in later, and then we can see what the body shape is. Again, maybe he's got his arms up. This is all about keeping it loose and fun, and interesting for yourself. I love doing this when I'm talking on the phone with people, because to some degree, it helps to not be all there mentally, because you don't want to look at it and really sort of stare at it and frown at the drawing, it's really just going with the motion and seeing what's there. If I say, "Okay, this shape is the beginning of the legs." Then I can say or it was but, I'm sorry he's got a big leg back here, and the other one would go down here. So, at that point, I take a new sheet of paper, put that down and say all right, well, his other leg extends down here. There we go. Then other things are happening with his body up here. If you do go off the page, what I like to do is make little excess like this that are sort of registration marks, and if you have a corner going over, sometimes I'll indicate that here so that as you're working, when things gets shuffled around, you can later find a way of aligning the sheets again so you know where you're. At this point, I get some non-sticky tape. If you have just regular adhesive tape, that usually will tear the paper if you take it off again. But there's a particular brand or a particular model of tape I guess, that you can use, that isn't super sticky. It will hold it together but it'll come off without leaving a mark. So, I like that for this. This was a block we did earlier where I put down the two separate marks. So, you can connect them, and you can make that into one character where there's some sort of body shape in between here maybe, and maybe that's the head and that's the body or vice versa. But at the same time, this could also be two characters. It's always really nice when you immediately have two characters because then there's automatically an interaction. So, let's say that this is the head. Again, I like to pick up the lines that are in the blot, and so for this one, there is this nice smooth line, the smooth edge here. So, that could be something that's coming out of the- suppose it three-dimensional shape of it. So, let's say that's the neck, and that comes down like so, then we'll have a body here, put an arm here, just for now, and all the stuff can change as we get into the more detailed drawings. Put some legs in just for fun. This will be the other character, and so they're looking at each other like so, once we got into the eyes. What will his body be? So, maybe his teeth are here, maybe to be determined. Give them a quick body, say like so. Already I'm starting to make some decisions as to what role do once we get into the more of the rendering aspect of it. If his arms are back like that, actually then I should erase this. When you're erasing be really gentle about it. There's hardly a drawing that I've done over many years, that isn't directed by me, going in like that and crinkling the paper. So, I just work on the erasing a little longer, be light about it. But if the arms are back like that, then that already suggests some attitude for him, where he's got his arms back and he's kind of like, "Yey. Okay, we," or he's really angry. He's tilted forward at this other character. As soon as I see something like that, I might redo the position of the body to emphasize that. So, that might be an interesting one. 6. Finalizing Monsters: All right. I'll work on these two blots because I think there is something that I immediately like about the idea of having two characters interacting. So, I sort of have the basic idea of what their mass is. This is very tall, skinny one, and a kind of blobby, smaller one. But within that, let's see what we can add to it. I still like continuing on this line as I had earlier. But I also want him to have some teeth. So, I'm going to go with the idea. He's got some teeth here and he's got a very thin jaw, and maybe he's got a big old mouth. More teeth here, a tongue. All right. I think that's going to work out just fine. I'm pretty happy with the way he structured, is that he's got this big long neck and a very small body. Might move it up a little bit so I have a little bit more room for the feet. This is really the stage for that, where you start out with something super, super loose and then you can revisit and change it according to what you need it to be. Hands bigger here. Let's see. Then we've got more room for the legs here, which is a nicer posture for him. Okay. What are we going to do with this little dude here? Because I'm not quite convinced that I've got him as good as it could be. So, my immediate thought is to the story. What is their interaction? Is the interaction that they're happy to see each other? Are they fighting? Is he taunting the little guy? What's going on? I don't quite have his head shape down yet. Let's see. I've drawn myself into a corner, that never happens. But this is, again, this is where everything really interesting starts happening. The great thing with this is, yeah, you shoot an arrow at the side of the barn and then wherever the arrows sticks, you just paint a target around it and then you're a genius. So, let me go back to what I know I should be doing, which is following the lines of the ink blot. So, I'm going to go off of this line here. It's just this little tendril coming out on this curve here. I still like the idea of, basically, a very, very smaller character with a big character interacting. But maybe the pose is different. This is starting to happen, see. Just by fiddling with the pencil and following the lines, there's something, just having this corner here all of a sudden suggests a shape for the rest of that head. Where you've got this big jaw coming out, you've got the big teeth. Just having this curve right or just having this corner right here really changed the thing. So, I'm glad that I started over on the shape of this character. So, I'm going to have the arms out like that because he's clearly upset about something. He is going to make a point in a big way. Cool. I like this, this is good. All right. Let's put on a little black line work and fix some of these guys. I'm excited about this. I'm going to start a new fresh pen for it. Okay. Yeah, look at that. This is all about finding things. This is all about discovering things that are already there and just building on them. So for me, this is, I'm completing a drawing. I'm not starting a drawing, I'm completing a drawing by having this ink blot and that's what's so much fun about it. Now, let me quickly erase the sketch, initial sketch. As you all remember from a few minutes ago, I didn't make a mistake, I just had this idea of adding this angry tongue a little bit later, a little bit after I already put that jaw line in here. So, I need to get that black line out there. Since it's such a little bit, I'm going to use my X-ACTO and I'm just going to scratch away a little bit. This is just sort of very, very, very, very light motion where I'm basically just roughing up the structure of the paper a little bit. So that then, if I go over it with my eraser, it actually takes a little bit of text. Sort of the top layer of the paper off, which is where the ink is. So, look at that, all gone. I'm back in business. Now, before I do anything else, I'm going to put some color into the tongues and that too, I'm going to use to tell a little bit of the story. Where the kind of happy character, he gets a yellow tongue. Like a nice, open, happy color. Be very careful not to hit the black ink because I don't want to smear anything. There you go. The angry character, we're going to give him a green tongue. Just to set them apart a little bit in that sense. All right. So right now, I'm just going to quickly, loosely fill in the heavy black areas. As you can see, I'm leaving these little white highlight lines in there because I like the idea that the monster skin is shiny. The filling in is always a little bit tedious and it always takes a little bit of time, but it's also a chance to zen out. I think with all creative work, the biggest secret to success is just to keep your ass in your seat. 7. Advice: Eyes and Emotion: You notice what they're still missing is they have no eyes, and that's because we have the ink blot so, I can't just draw on it so I'm going to do the eyes separately. I'm going to take just a blank sheet of paper from my stack and I'm just going to kind rough it in, they're going to make eye contact. I want to do an eye a little bit bigger for you just to show you what's going on because right now for the drawing it has to be fairly small. On the pupil, I always put this little indentation at the top which is kind of a highlight to show that the eye has some gloss on it x-ray, it actually ends up being important to the idea that he's making eye contact with you is where the highlight is coming in. When the eyes are looking to the side, I have some little internal rolls and if the eye is looking to the right to have the rings get very near each other but they never touch. So, to me, there's a magnetic field that keeps them from touching. That's just how I explain it to myself. So, this to me would be a good eye looking to the right. Now, I'll just show you a bad eye would be no highlight. This eye just pisses me off like if I saw that somebody draw this eye, I'd be madly angry because it just doesn't conform to the way my universe works. So, again, the eye rings, they get very near to each other but they never touch. Okay, because what I'm going do next is, I'll take some scissors and very roughly cut these out and just sort of lay them in like this on the drawing. If you're doing this at home, make sure that you're on a cutting mat or on a sofa set that you don't mind chopping up because the knife will go through. So, I am going to put this eye here. I'm putting the eye on top of the drawing and then I am going fix it with my finger and I'm going to take the exacto blade and cut through both pieces of paper at the same time, and these are fiddly little bits of papers so you have to really press down so that it doesn't move around and the sharper your exacto blade is, the better off you're going to be right and just cut a whole circle around and make sure you cut that out and then you can see that this just pops out of the drawing and then the eye pops out in the same shape. Turn the sheet over and you don't have to cut it perfectly smoothly. In fact, it helps if you don't because then, you will find how the eye fits in from the back and you see it fits in precisely because you just cut two sheets on top of each other. Take a little bit of tape, stick it down and then I have a burnisher just one of the use guys for modeling clay and for putting down letraset letters if you're over the age of 80 and you kind of burnish it in a little bit but you can also just use the edge of a pen and do it like this, just to get it in real nice and voila now it's gotten an eye in there. If you see a little bit of paper from where you cut, you can just go around with a pen and blend it in a little bit more. All right. Yeah, look at that now its got like billed nose and everything. I put a little bit more detail shutter in here. Also, you can experiment more with the eyes of how excited is the guy on the left, do you actually put a little line in here to make his lower lid come off which makes some extra gleeful. Sometimes I mean at this point and fairly far into the drawing so, I don't want to really screw it up so, I want to just sometimes try out things and solve take a little piece of scrap paper like where I just cut out the eye and I'll just make a little black edge here, that just lets me experiment a little bit without going directly into the drawing. So, I'll take that and I'll just see what it does to the eye. You can you can see how that totally changes his aspect. If you went from the top, you could make him really mean like now they're at a bar and they're scheming a bank heist or something like that or maybe he feels kind of sad for the guy like he has some compassion for the guy. So, then you put the the upper lid down a little bit. The last thing I'm going to do just as a little grace note because I can never quite stop myself is put a beard on this guy. Again, this is about the story so, the little dude on the right is obviously super, super intense and this guy is much more like "Hey, what are you going to do?" So, I think the details on image should reflect that. So, where the guy on the right has these sharp spikes, this dude is going to just have much more sort of loose and flowing facial hair. Alright. Now, he's got that nice little detail because I also think it's important for the drawing to create things that if somebody wants to come back to it and wants to look at it again the next day or they just come to your website again, there should be stuff for them to explore and to find if they do look at it a second time or third time. So, I always believe in adding little details that aren't maybe the first thing you notice. Okay, should be Easter eggs are great. I love Easter eggs some. There you go. 8. Final Thoughts: All right. Well, now you've seen how I make monsters. Hopefully, this will pave the way to you creating your own characters. If you'd like to just experiment with the exact same inkblot that I just used for those two guys, that's in the downloadable materials. So, you can just see what you would do with that, because, I mean, this is one of a million different things you can do with just those two blots. As a matter of fact, I would love it if you would create your own characters and upload them, so I can see what you would have done. I can see what you did do. As I said, I think the challenge is to find your own project that is as much fun for you as making the monsters as for me, and to find the kind of random element that you can reliably start with, because the thing that I think is most difficult about any creative project is the starting of it and the idea of overcoming the fear of am I good enough for it or do I have a good enough idea to do something. To short circuit that, and for me, it's inkblots and I'm really curious to see what that element is for you, could be photos of shadows on the street, could be fruit, could be you draw on baseballs and golf balls. It could be anything and I would love to see what your projects are and what you can use to get started, because that'll help me in what I do and in the way that hopefully what I do helps you do what you want to do. I really think there is importance to committing to it for a set amount of time and to do it publicly. To post it for others to see because it'll keep you doing it on the days that you don't want to do it. It's super easy to be creative and to make interesting fun things on the days where you're feeling awesome and that's easy, that's like the universe just giving you a gift. The days where you're really going to prove that you're an artist or the days when you feel shitty, you're tired, you haven't slept, you don't feel inspired, those are the important days. Those are the days where you are really somebody who works in the arts and this is what that's about, this is what the monster is about, and this is what your exercises should be about, for you, is to get you through those days. Where it isn't just a gimme, where it doesn't come easy. You want to have a method for those days that just gets you to your desk, gets your ass in the seat, and gets you working because then as soon as you work your brain is trained. I mean, you're trained to do something, to create something, to make something interesting, and it's really about overcoming the fear and overcoming the inertia. Whenever you're feeling that day, this is all about having a method for the days that aren't great. Then when the days are great, then everything is gravy, then you're just really having fun but the idea of committing to it for 100 days is to learn how to just show up every day and make something. No matter how I felt about myself or the work I do or what's happening in my life, when I can get myself to just sit down and make something, I've never not felt better after having made something and that's the point of all this and I'm excited to see what your method is to get that done. 9. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: