Get ready to scream ... with delight over these awesome monsters.
<br>What's Halloween without some creepy monsters to haunt your dreams?
Image by Trey Wadsworth/The Monster Project.
That's exactly what Katie Johnson, the creator of The Monster Project thinks — except in her case, monsters haunt her dreams (in the best way) all year long.
Johnson began drawing monsters when she was younger to jumpstart her creative process. Today, she uses monsters to help kids learn about the magic of artistic expression.
"Monsters can be anything," Johnson explained over an email. "They can be short or tall, angry or happy, as big as a planet or as small as a pea. There are infinite possibilities when you're drawing a monster and there are no wrong answers."
The Monster Project offers kids the chance to see their monster drawings brought to life by professional artists.
Originally Johnson was the sole participating artist, but soon, she invited her peers to help out. "It really just clicked into place that the more artists I could involve, the richer the experience would be for the kids," writes Johnson.
Eventually word spread through artist communities, and now Johnson has over 1,000 artists at The Monster Project's disposal. The artists pick from drawings the kids submit and illustrate them, and at the end of the process, the kids get to see the illustration and a video message from the artist who made it.
Here's 15 of The Monster Project's 100 new monsters and the professional artists who brought them to life — just in time for Halloween
1. This triangle-headed monster by Riccardo Zema
All images from The Monster Project, used with permission.
2. A spacey frog alien by Stuart Wade
3. A flower factory robot by Oliver Sin
4. This marshmallow-stone-eating dragon by Stuart Wade
5. A creepy skeleton king by Stefano Colferai
6. A singing cat monster with heart eyes by Sergio Chaves
7. This panda-loving gumdrop monster by Chris Schofield
8. A wild-haired art enthusiast monster by Agata Karelus
9. A ghost-hunting mad red dog by Luis Pinto
10. A critical lady monster by Aleksey Baydakov
11. A building-hugging wooly monster by Alex Jefferies
12. A casual gremlin by Trey Wadsworth
13. A glorious tree monster by Milan Vasek
14. A dragon tornado by Christi du Toit
15. This colorful rainbow mohawk kitty monster by Bakea
It just goes to show that monsters can be awesome in any form. What's most spooktacular about these monsters is how they help kids flex their creative muscles.
Despite the fact that the arts have been shown to help students perform better across the board, many schools can't afford to keep their art education programs due to budget cuts. That's why Monster Project is working to make their services free to schools in low-income areas that have had to do away with them.
They're getting there with the help of donations and an online shop where you can buy things like a monster activity book made up of the artists' monster recreations. The Monster Project is also having a gallery showing in San Francisco in December thanks to an Adobe sponsorship.
Johnson's goal is to keep expanding until The Monster Project can offer recreated monsters to kids in need of a creative outlet all across the country.
To think that all of this came from one woman who recognized what great power monsters have — both on and off the page. That's scary cool.
<br>Find more monsters on The Monster Project's Instagram page.
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