“Cap’n Clobber” is this weeks creature for Monster Monday. A gorilla pirate with a skull for a head, complete with glowing eyes. Obviously he needed a peg leg and some swords.

This week’s character arose from a quick sketch. I wanted to work on a full body character, and wanted to add some personality outside of just the face and a hulking body. I started with the skull (which originally had an eyepatch, but it wasn’t reading well once I got to the color art stage so I ditched it).

I started working on ideas for the body, and thought I would give him a gorilla body, and as I worked on it for whatever reason the idea to give him the pegleg came in mind so I went with the pirate theme.

He kinda reminds me of the action figure mashups I used to make as a kid — take apart my brother’s Masters Of The Universe action figures and reattach the limbs and heads to make my own character.

The glowing red robot eyes are an obvious homage to Stan Winston’s Terminator endoskeleton. Which I guess makes this character part robot, part pirate, part ape and part skeleton. Cool.

Rough sketch and final color art worked up in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

Another cartoon monster head for this week’s Monster Monday submission.

I had originally set out to create a minotaur/bull style creature, but I started out with too human of a face. Modifying it was not working so I decided to go with the human version and save the bull for a future post.

Sketched, drawing and coloring done in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

“Yellow Bellow” is the newest member of my monster collection for Monster Monday. The initial rough sketch for this critter was loosely roughed out in Photoshop, and then the drawing was cleaned up and colored in using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

Cartoon drawing of a blue devil/demon.

Original sketch drawn in my sketchbook, graphite on paper, then scanned into Photoshop where the sketch cleanup and color was added using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

The head was sketched out and colored in completely on it’s own, then the body sketched out & color added, both elements were isolated in their own Layer Groups in Photoshop.

Original sketch created in my sketchbook, graphite on paper, then scanned into Photoshop where the sketch cleanup and color was added suing a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

A fun monster/creature exercise once again.

Another Photoshop paint job for this week — I give you a green gremlin. No, not that Green Gremlin.

This sketch was created entirely in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet. Initial sketches were roughed in, then refined. I copied the refined sketch layer and flipped the copy horizontally. Another rough sketch layer was added to refine one half of the face sketch. I did this to find the symmetry and to choose which parts from each side of the face worked best.

Once the half-face rough sketch was complete, I duplicated and again horizontally flipped the layer, then merged the two. From there I flat-filled the base colors and added a shadow layer (set to multiply and also set to clip from the flat color layer). A highlights layer was added (set to Screen mode).

Shading and highlights worked up in their respective layers, then the linework layer was duplicated and cleaned up. The original linework layer was hidden. I did this to be able to go back to it if necessary.

I have found through experimenting that when creating a highlight layer and setting the Layer Blending Mode to “Screen”, I can use the original flat color from the base layer color, and it will highlight nicely. The shadows I am still picking colors manually.

A flat background was added, then a quick gradient to add a slight bit of depth.

Cartoon sketch of a devil, working still on painting in Photoshop using the Wacom Intuos3 tablet.

For this “Igor” type character (the trusty Mad Scientist lab assistant guy), I started out with a sketch from an evil clown character I created a few years ago. I wanted to work with some new painting styles in Adobe Photoshop, specifically staying away from the Dodge/Burn tools as they seemed to render colors with too much saturation, and in general are a poor excuse for building color, shading and highlights on your own.

I started out with the head from an existing sketch so I didn’t have to bog myself down in creating something from scratch when really I wanted to experiment with coloring and painting in Photoshop. The evil clown sketch had a nice creepy character head/face, so I thought it was a good launching point.

The base colors were laid down on a separate layer, as were the shading and highlight layers. Hair and background also on separate layers. The body was just roughly worked up to keep the head from being a floating object.

Looking at him now, I am thinking he might have been better as a graveyard keeper, with an appropriately spooky latern instead of the test tube he’s holding.

I went for high-contrast dramatic lighting, and reworked the shading and highlights many times as I was experimenting. Brush was nothing fancy, just the standard Photoshop painting brush at very low opacity and set to use the pressure sensitivity of the Wacom Intuos3 tablet.

I think I could have gone into more detail, especially on the lips and the body, but I didn’t want to overwork the sketch while I was experiementing. I think I hit a nice stopping point and decided to share as-is. Perhaps I will revisit Igor sometime in the future.

Visit George Coghill’s cartooning & humorous illustration portfolio.