One Eyed Monsters

Sometimes, when I’m not feeling particularly creative (which is often), I will flip through my favorite instructional art books and decide to try an exercise. I happened upon one titled “One Eyed Monsters” which seems pretty self-explanatory.

Sometimes I struggle with art exercises. This exercise, for some reason, completely captured my imagination. Maybe because a monster can look like anything, so there were no “rules” to follow. Every medium became fair game. And any type of paper.  “Disco Bob” is on mixed media paper using a set of watercolor pencils I received from an art box sub. The other creature was created using a Japanese brush pen on mixed media paper.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I drew one eyed monsters at work meetings, on junk mail, while at the airport and visiting with my nieces, using every kind of sketchbook and type of media I own. Everywhere.  All. The. Time.

In the following photos, I used everything from gel pens to alcohol markers to metallic and watercolor brush pens, adding a collage item here or there. 

Basically, this was proof to me that art exercises are like trying out new vegetables – you might be reluctant at first, but they’re definitely good for you and you might even learn to enjoy them.