How to Draw a Funny Monkey

Video Transcript

"Joel Hickerson, grindog.com, we're going to draw a funny monkey. Starting out what is going to make this monkey funny? We still want to remember the construction elements of our monkey which the muzzle is going to be a big circle and we are going to put the head behind that. Now we come up with elements that might make this monkey a funny monkey. Well one thing that might do it is if he was really surprised about something. When I draw a surprised monkey or even a little human face it is always cool to put a little asterisks where their mouth is and maybe a bottom lip. Don't forget the basic construction elements of their eyes and now he is probably looking at something that surprised him and when you draw a surprised monkey you draw the hair up and out kind of almost like it is exploding out, everything is exploding out and then maybe his hands are up against his face. Like oh my goodness something just happened there man and then every funny monkey you have got to draw their booty so we draw a little funky monkey butt and his feet and again these are construction elements. So what we are going to do when we get done with the construction elements we are going to come back with our marker and make them make sense. So we'll start with the eye and the wackier the better. These eyes don't have to be symmetrical, this is a cartoon so really exaggerate things. Again the mouth doesn't even have to follow the same asterisks lines that you just had. Get a little shadow on that bottom lip, draw the muzzle and you can kind of see it starting to shape up and the hands don't even really need to look like hands they just kind of have to be out there. I am kind of framing his face and the monkey butt speaks for itself. The little tail is coming out, one foot, two feet, belly, bottom of the muzzle and the back of the head. Remember a monkey has got ears. That is one of the monkey things that makes him a monkey is if you really exaggerate the ears on it. The surprise element is keep the hair flying off the head and you can even do raised eyebrows, that might help. Basically that is the construction part of your monkey and then you can come back with your eraser and erase your construction lines. Remember to draw very lightly with the pencil so that these construction lines come off really easily and you don't really have to bear down so hard and once you get the construction lines erased you can come back and make shadows where you need shadows like at the base of the ears. You want to give this thing a little bit of gravity so at the bottom of all of these elements you want to give it a little thicker line. Make sure there isn't anything you want to really stand out and come back and draw a little heavier. With the surprised look you might want to kind of do the outside of the eyes. You have got a couple o sweat lines coming off of there. That's a funny monkey."