IF: "Muddy"

This is not only my entry for this week's Illustration Friday... its also my entry for a very cool new blog called "Monsters in Real Places"


I always figured Yukon Gold potatoes came from the Yukon. But no, the bag of 'yellow fleshed' potatoes in the basement came from nearby Shelburne, Ontario. Huh! Curious, I decided to check out Shelburne on Google Earth... and was amazed at what I saw! Yup, its Muddy Pete, the giant potatoe monster, caught on Google's satellite photos as he tries to sneak around the outskirts of Shelburne, leaving his signature giant muddy footprints behind him . You can tell by all his many, many eyes that Pete's been hanging around for quite some time.

Anybody can contribute a monster in a real place. Just drop by the MIRP blog and check out how to participate!

* Incidentally, Muddy Pete is very much inspired by an old Power Rangers action figure called "The Eye-Poppin' Eye Guy". My kids used to love playing with their Power ranger action figures when they were little. When they got older and decided to get rid of all those action figures, I rescued Eye Guy from the trash and he holds a place of honour on my studio toy shelf.

IF "Focused"

This week's Illustration Friday word was "Focused". A tough one to figure out! I had a lot of different thoughts about this but finally came up with the idea of doing something like those cool old title sequences you always see on James Bond movies.

I found some reference of a girl pointing a gun on Flickr and used that as the basis for my illustration. I'm going to send the Flickr member a link to this post - I hope she likes the way I used her photos for inspiration to create this IF piece!


This really was a fun one to work on... but I wish I had more time to explore the design further. Maybe I'll try out some variations on the weekend!