Weird Creatures, Gentle Nightmares
When I was in kindergarden we would sometimes paint together by folding our papers in three or four parts and only drawing in one of the resulting slots. Then you handed your paper over to the next kid, making sure they didn't see what you had drawn, and they would continue.
As the lockdown has rendered a lot of once favourite pastimes stale, my family returned to this game - and what a delight it was! We gave each other little hints, like "dangerous but fashionable", "summer" or "party bus" and indicated with lines where our dawing connected to the next slot. The results... were hilarious, unexpectedly thoughtprovoking or just plain weird. None of us could have come up with any of the artworks by themselves, that's for sure.
So I thought: This might be a good way to break neural patterns and come up with crazy characters! But how to do this on my own?
Turns out it wasn't too difficult. Let me show you some embellished sketches of the results:
What I came up with is fairly simple: I created 3 masks in Fresco, separating the canvas into 3 slots. Then I sketched different characters, an alien, a made-up tentacle-like sea creature, a chameleon on a branch, a whale, and a girl with a hat. I had to make sure that for each slot all character outlines ended on the same spots. Then I duplicated layers, masked them, then switched and recombined portions. And got creeped out by my own work. Especially by the girl's head on anything... Did I mention the girl started as a self-portrait that I botched? Brrr.
This was really liberating and great fun. And I might do more later or color the ones I got. But now I need a bit of distance, you know. So I can sleep without dreaming of some of these.
Thanks for watching, thanks for your time! If ever you use this method for anything, give me a shout, I want to see the results! Happy drawing.