I’ve been illustrating a monster a day since the start of the school holidays here in Western Australia, the official COVID-19 lockdown date for Broome.

Why did I choose monsters? Ever since I was a kid, I have loved drawing monsters: mostly because it’s fun and, unlike a lot of subjects I draw, there are no rules. All the sketches you see here started off as warm up side scribbles I did on breaks between jobs. In my daily process, before I knuckle down to get a few hours of illustration done, I start off doing warm ups sketches (trust me they make a huge difference to my daily output). What I do is find a random image from the web or in the current day’s newspaper and do a 7-minute sketch inspired by it. Then I do another sketch without the visual reference and adding in my own horror Sci-Fi flare.

With these illustrations, I challenge myself of not using a references, and to be creepy without any gore or with minimal blood and guts. I was raised on horror movies, and not using blood splatter was going to be a challenge. I tried to capture the yucky cringe factor like staring into a big black head pimple.

Not all illustrations are cringeworthy, but I explored the term ‘monster’ and its varied interpretations.