Chad Sell

This guy represents all the doubt and insecurity any artist can feel, and he must be overcome to reconnect with creativity. The Month of Monsters let me do just that–I’ve gotten to play around with tons of techniques old and new. And color, too!!

I only drew one monster of my own creation for my Month of Monsters, and that was the Dark Leviathan from Doodleville. Thanks for following along!

Thank you!!!!

Oooo! Love this geometric approach! 🤩💖 Lovely!!

I wasn't sure if I would finish the initial sketch, but once I settled on a simplified, geometric approach, it all clicked for me! It just took some time to piece it all together.

My final piece of Monster Train art for the month is Ekka, High Witch of the Luna Coven! I loved capturing the intricacy of her costume, even if I simplified it a bit. Happy Halloween!! 🎃 👻

I've really had a ton of fun playing with texture this month! The linework here is done with a Pilot G2 gel pen, and then most of the shading is done with Copic marker ink that I keep in a refillable brush pen. The gray textures are done with a gray Prismacolor pencil!

Weirdly enough, I haven't drawn many monsters from superhero comics this month, but I had fun sketching out the Abomination, Hulk’s Cold War counterpart. I love that his spiky, textured skin is paired with those adorable wing ears!

This was actually my second drawing of Trap Jaw for this series. The first one didn't quite work, and it put too much focus on his giant gun-arm. 😵‍💫

A beautiful ode to toxic masculinity, Trap Jaw is the best. Who wouldn’t kill for that jawline, am I right?

The original sketch of Karen was pretty simple, but then I spent way too long on all the background stuff! (You can see Hexadecimal's leg from earlier this month!)

Emil Ferris crashed onto the comics scene with her debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters. I love its main character Karen, a lonely wolf-girl trying to solve a murder in the darkest days of 1960s Chicago.

I stuck really closely to this original drawing. It was just tricky deciding on the final colors! Night scenes are tough.

I first got the full Bone collection in college and was blown away by the art and storytelling! @jeffsmithsbone.bsky.social is an absolute legend. His rat creatures are fun villains you meet early on, and I love them so, so much.

I stuck pretty close to the original sketch, but I like how clean and angular it is compared to the final version. Sometimes less is more!

I fell hard for Attack on Titan a few years ago, binging the first few glorious seasons of the show. I'm sure fans have a whole lot of feelings about Eren, but you can't deny that his titan design is pretty cool!

This started out as a fairly small, simple drawing. I changed quite a bit for the digital version--especially the mouth and helmet!

When I think “classic monster design,” I can't help but picture Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes! I love all the little details, especially the constant drooling. So gross and so great!

This was one of the first monster pieces I started this month, but it took me the longest to finish! I went a little overboard with the shading in the original drawing, so it was tricky to translate to the digital version. I also simplified his costume a lot! (The character designs in MT are wild!)

Rector Flicker is the champion of the Melting Remnant in Monster Train, and one of my favorite characters to play! The MR are all about death and rebirth, and I love Flicker's melting, menacing look.

The Wendigo is an evil, cannibalistic creature from Algonquian folklore. I wanted to capture the feeling of stumbling across one in a dark, deserted forest. I had a lot of fun with color and texture in this piece!

The weird musculature was tricky to capture in the sketch, but it did help establish the volume and extreme perspective!

Attack on Titan gets off to quite a stunning start with the reveal of the Colossal Titan. I wanted to capture his immense sense of scale, what it might feel like to look up at this absolute monster. All the Titan designs are amazing, but this was the one I had to draw!

I wanted to combine a sense of rigid geometry with rough textures in this piece. But I might not know what I'm talking about.

One of my childhood obsessions was the early CGI cartoon Reboot. It would only air intermittently, and I scoured the early internet to find out everything I missed from the episodes that didn’t air in the US. Hexadecimal was not the main villain of the show, but she was my favorite. 🎭

I feel like Goliath's pose ended up looking a bit more stiff than I wanted, but he did spend a couple centuries turned to stone, right?

Who would have thought of basing an entire children's show on…gargoyles? Truly, a wild concept from the 90s, but with some ageless character designs! (Though, admittedly, I'm not sure about that hair! 😂)

The original sketch--I wish I had kept the angle of this in the final version! Oh well.

A friend recently lent me the entire boxed set of Akira, which was such a revelation! Pretty much the most amazing comic art I’ve ever seen. I particularly loved Tetsuo's monstrous transformation and had to try drawing it!

This piece was one of the few this month that I inked digitally--I didn't want to work directly off the original sketch. You can also see that I tweaked his pose a little!