The Notebook of Kahvinporo

Because this sounds just so epic and cool… But I don’t know what characters I should use. So when I make up my mind I’ll start this!  (I didn’t invent this challenge, I just made my own post because then it will be easier to me to look these and update when I’ve finished a pic.)

A creative challenge I’ll be doing that you’re all welcome to partake in. Basically: You’ll be drawing/writing about/whatever other creative thing you want to do 28 different monsters based on the prompts below. You can do doodles, full-blown paintings, short drabbles, whole stories, whatever you want. While this is intended to be done through the month of February you’re welcome to do this whenever you wish. 

These monsters can be gross, creepy, cutesy, pretty, whatever you want. Just let your imagination fly and have fun with this.

If this catches on it’d be really cool if you tagged your creations with ‘28 Monsters.’ I’m interested to see other people’s takes on the prompts.

Day 1:  A swamp dwelling monster.

Day 2: A monster that brings about a specific disease.

Day 3: A particularly cute monster inspired by an insect or an arachnid.

Day 4: A humanoid monster with feline features.

Day 5: A monster inspired by deep-sea organisms.

Day 6: A monster that disguises itself as a common household object.

Day 7: Pick a tree and combine it with your favorite animal. Make your monster out of this.

Day 8: An unusual take on the vampire. 

Day 9: An unusual take on the werewolf.

Day 10: A particularly scary monster based on a traditionally adorable animal like rabbits, small dogs, etc.

Day 11:  A candy-based monster.

Day 12: A beautiful monster that uses its beauty to lure in prey.

Day 13: A monster based on a common farm animal, like cows, sheep, or chickens.

Day 14: A monster that only appears in our world on Valentine’s Day.

Day 15: A flamboyantly colored monster with a beautiful voice.

Day 16: A monster that lures humans into wooded areas and makes them extremely fearful of the world outside said wooded area.

Day 17: A monster that causes a minor inconvenience, like getting your socks lost or bogging down your internet speed.

Day 18: A monster based off a childhood fear of yours.

Day 19: An intimidating, vicious monster that can be easily defeated with a common household object.

Day 20: A monster that inhabits coral-reefs.

Day 21: A monster with three mouths, none of these mouths being on its head, and a highly specific diet

Day 22: A monster with at least 2 heads and no eyes.

Day 23: A monster that appears in crowded areas in broad daylight and travels silently through the crowd. Nobody knows what it wants but police stations are generally flooded with missing person reports after it appears.

Day 24: A slime-based monster with an addictive slime that causes feelings of bliss.

Day 25: A crystalline monster that causes feelings of unease, which it then feeds off.

Day 26: A monster you can summon by chanting its name 3 times in a dark room in front of a mirror. What this monster does when summoned is up to you.

Day 27: A monster with unusually large hands that is generally found prowling the halls of hospitals at night for unknown reasons.

I’ve been getting a lot of asks lately about the brushes and textures I use in my work, so here’s a BIG FAT REFERENCE POST for those of you who were curious! Bear in mind that I’m really lazy and don’t know what half the settings do, so don’t be afraid to experiment to figure out what works best for you :>

BRUSHES

Pencil I use the pencil tool with SAI’s native paper texture both for sketching and for applying opaque color with no blending. Lower opacities give it the feel of different pencil hardnesses, while full opacity makes it more like a palette knife, laying down hard-edged, heavy color for detail work or eventual blending with other brushes. Ink Pen Mostly made this because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to have to keep turning my textures off/opacity up when I wanted to ink something (even though I don’t do it very often), or lay down flat colors. I find the line quality to be much more crisp than Photoshop, and you can manually adjust in-program stabilization to help smooth out hand wobbles. Round Brush The plain ol’ brush tool acts as sort of an in-between for me in terms of brush flow. It’s heavier than my usual workhorse brush, for faster color application and rough blending, but not as heavy as the pencil tool, which has no blending at all. I like to use the canvas texture on this brush to help break up the unnatural smoothness that usually accompanies digital brushes, but it works just fine without. Flat Brush A brush tool set to flat bristle is by far my favorite to paint with. I don’t use any textures with it because I think the shape of the brush provides enough of that by itself. I use it for everything from rough washes to more refined shaping and polish. It’s just GREAT.

Watercolor Best used for smooth blending, washes, gradients, and smoky atmospheric effects. Cloud Basically a grittier version of the watercolor tool, because too much smoothness weird me out. Good for clouds and fog, as the name suggests, or just less boring gradient fills.

TEXTURE OVERLAY

To further stave off the artificially smooth look of digital painting, I almost always overlay some sort of paper texture, and it’s almost always this one, which I scanned and edited myself. You’re all welcome to use it, no permission required!

Using overlays in SAI is just as easy as using them in Photoshop. Just paste the texture into its own layer above everything you want it to apply to, and change the layer mode to Overlay. That’s it!

Want a more prominent texture? Up the contrast. Something more subtle? Lower the contrast or reduce the layer opacity. You can also use a tinted overlay to adjust the overall palette and bring a little more color unity to an otherwise disparate piece! Just be aware that too much texture can hurt the readability of the work beneath it, so I’d err on the side of subtlety.

Hope that helps!

cuteminimo