Daily Napkins: Mythology

Showing posts with label Mythology. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Unicorn Takes on "Zilla"

Kaiju Killer:

(But only the less popular Kaiju)

Our older son can provide chapter and verse about the differences and relative merits of the various iterations of Godzilla. Unsurprisingly, his information and opinions come mostly second hand. He hasn't actually watched all those obscure-to-western-viewers 1960's Toho monster movies. I suggested to him that he probably wouldn't have the patience to sit through, say, "Mothra vs. Godzilla" from 1964, or even the 1992 version, "Godzilla vs Mothra." He replied, "Oh God, mom, of course not! That's what Youtube is for!"

Through watching YouTube, he managed to pick up the near universal fanboy condemnation of the 1998 American Godzilla movie. (the one with Matthew Broderick) That monster is known among the kaiju cognoscenti as "Zilla" because "they took the God out of Godzilla." If you want to know more about what that sentence means, I recommend the Wikipedia entry...or spending an ungodly amount of time watching YouTube commentary.

When my son asked me to draw him riding a Unicorn "Kaiju Killer" like the one pictured in 101 Ways to Use a Unicorn by Robb Perlman and Dave Urban, I knew it had to be "Zilla."

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Useful Unicorn

Our younger son recently rediscovered the book "101 Ways to Use a Unicorn" by Robb Pearlman and Dave Urban.

While it is perhaps not quite as sublime as its predecessor, "101 Ways to Kill a Zombie," our sons find this book pretty amusing. It's greatest appeal is of course that it includes some concepts that require adult explanation, like "Greek diner check spindle" or more importantly, "proctological instrument."

I cannot remember what number "Toilet paper roll holder" is in the book, but as it is featured on the cover of the book, it seemed like the obvious choice for a napkin.

I drew a much less utilitarian background and sweetened up the image in an effort to avoid offending the female unicorn enthusiasts in my son's classroom.

I have to admit that I myself was inordinately enthusiastic about unicorns when I was in second grade. Few things pleased me more at the time than using a purple marker to draw horses with wings or a horn.

When I was my son's age and younger, I intensely coveted the fancy art markers that my parents used to color product design illustrations. I recently had the idiotic realization that all this marker and napkin stuff is a perfect realization of the drawing fantasies I had when I was a small child. It's pretty pathetic, actually.

And minus the toilet paper, I would have been extremely pleased with this image four decades ago.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Valiant Cerberus

Valiant the Pug, our kids' favorite character from Giants Beware and Dragons Beware gets the Cerberus treatment.
A three headed dog does appear in the book, along with gargoyles, a witch, and of course, dragons.
Valiant only has the one head in the graphic novels. but he is willing to take on dragons anyway.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Brooklyn Bridge with Giant Tentacles

The Kraken has been released.

I am not getting any better at drawing the Brooklyn Bridge. The more I draw it, the more I throw up my hands in despair at the idea of getting the lines straight and the perspective correct.

I am not good at drawing straight lines. And then there is the napkin excuse: No line stays straight on the napkin surface anyway. (Or, maybe I am just plain lazy when it comes to this sort of thing.)

Tentacles, however, work nicely on napkins.
And I feel pretty motivated about drawing them.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

American Holstein Minotaur

Ansel is still listening to "The Lightning Thief" on Audible.

This Minotaur is definitely not accurate to Mr. Riordan's description in the book. After looking at various swarthy and threatening Minotaur images on Google late last night, I thought why shouldn't a bovine man who lives on American soil be white bread and dairy farm appropriate?

Ansel was not terribly impressed this morning, but he had come down with strep overnight, and ate lunch at home anyway.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Pierce Brosnan-Like Chiron fron "Percy Jackson"

Ansel discovered yesterday that he loves listening to "The Lightning Thief" on Audible.

He was determined that he was going to listen to all of it (10 plus hours) before bedtime.

I'll admit, I have become confused as to which character appears in which Percy Jackson book at which point in the story- and then there are the movies as well... so I chose a character that I was certain appears early on in the story.

I spent most of my childhood drawing horses, so I foolishly thought a centaur would be easy for me to pull off quickly.

Friday, February 7, 2014

Fluffy Shares Strawberries with Cyclops

Ansel was very impressed with George O'Connor's interpretation of the Cyclopes. (And here we are talking about the sons of Uranus and Gaia, the brothers of the Titans, and not Polyphemus, the sort of one eyed guy who appears in recent and not so recent movies. And the plural of Cyclops is Cyclopes...just don't want you to think that I can't use Wikipedia)

Based on my five minute perusal of the Google image results for "cyclops," I can observe that it seems to have always been a challenge to figure out how to locate that one eye in the context of the human face. It definitely does not work well with a nose or eyebrows. I think Mr. O'Connor's solution of turning the whole head into an eye- and removing the neck as well- is a very elegant answer to the age old Cyclops design problem.

...And they have claws, and what 7 year old boy does not love a thing with claws? There were strawberries packed in the lunch, so I thought perhaps we should put the claws to good use.

I included Fluffy because it seems that no napkin is not improved by the addition of a hamster.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Fluffy the Hamster with Zeus

Fluffy, first grade hamster wears her welding goggles while watching Zeus demonstrate his skill with lightning.

Having finished reading George O'Connor's "Poseidon: Earth Shaker," we moved on to his "Zeus: King of the Gods."

The aftermath of the infestation of our kids' hair a couple of days ago has been extremely time consuming...the laundry alone has been monumental... so this was another very quick sketch.

Daily Napkins