Gilbert's Grill

This was an assignment for an illustration 2 class. (Spring 2011). The assignment was to come up with an alliteration then draw it. My Alliteration was "Ghosts and Goblins gobbled giga-gummies and gulped grape soda at the Grand opening of Gilbert's Grill". Whenever I've heard the phrase "ghosts and goblins" it generally seems to refer to an assortment of monsters as opposed to "goblins" specifically. So I basically used it as an excuse to draw all the monsters I wanted.
"Giant" probably would've made more sense than "giga" but the "G" in "giant" sounds more like a "J" and it wouldn't have sounded right.

Goblins from right to left include: a cute Cthulhu-type goblin, a small clown creature partly inspired by Killer Klowns from Outer Space, a pumpkin/squash goblin, Gilbert (of course), a purple and pink bat, a Mothman inspired goblin, and a Hopkinville goblin inspired goblin.


The pumpkin/squash goblin was inspired by some monsters I had seen in vintage 1920s Halloween greeting cards and illustrations made out of Autumn vegetables. They typically had small pumpkin heads, big pumpkin bodies, corn cob arms, and haystacks for legs. For this assignment I wanted to try my own take on it so instead of a big pumpkin body and a little pumpkin head I gave it a big pumpkin head and a squash body. Unfortunately I didn't put too much thought into how it would look colored and it came out kind of "bleh". It also really needed more detail.
(On a related note, I "dressed up" Fella as a pumpkin goblin for Deviant Art's 2009 Halloween contest.)

I wanted to include a Mothman goblin because Mothman is one of my favorite cryptids. (If you follow me, you might remember the Christmas drawing I did of it.) Moth-Goblin's eyes where inspired by the Stupid Stupid Rat Creatures from Bone. If you haven't read Bone I recommend checking it out.

The Hopkinville Goblins are one of the most famous close encounters in American UFO history but most Americans have probably never heard of them. And yet somehow it's apparently well known enough in Japan to get it's own pokemon. The Hopkinville goblins were actually described as being silver but since these are goblins in the supernatural sense and not the extraterrestrial sense I made mine gold just to distinguish it from the latter... more importantly I didn't feel like mixing another color.
In retrospect, it would've been better to have loosely based all the goblins on Hopkinville goblins and focused on creating a stronger composition with a better background. Of course, drawing an assortment of monsters is the whole reason I chose this alliteration to begin with. But then again, sometimes you need to know how to make the right sacrifices for the sake of the overall project.

Gilbert wasn't based on any particular monster. I just came up with the name "Gilbert" and thought, "Well he's gotta be a guy with a goldfish for a head". Gilbert was fun to draw.

I made the ghosts in the background with artist tape and an X-Acto knife. First, I laid down some tape were I wanted to put each ghost (after sticking the tape to the back of my hand and pulling it off again to make sure it wasn't too sticky). Then I drew the ghosts on the tape in pencil, cut around them with the X-Acto knife, removed the excess tape, painted around them, and then peeled off the rest of the tape after the had paint dried. And vi-oh-la! Inverted ghost silhouettes.