Homage to Eddie Cool Monk's Sketching Style

PART OF MY COMIC STRIP PAGE LAYOUT SERIES

Comic Strip Layout Inspiration from Eddie Cool Monk

There is no better way to improve your sketching skills and develop your own personal style, than finding sketcher’s whose style inspires you, and one of those sketchers is Eddie Cool Monk. In this blog post, I take a look at three different examples of his sketch pages where he’s used a comic strip style layout. Usually I’d create a sketch of the artist, but Eddie has limited online presence and I couldn’t find a photo, so I had to sketch (what I think is him) from his comic strips, to create the feature image for this article.

I really like the ease of Eddie’s sketching style, which is distinctive and is immediately recognisable. He uses a variety of different page layouts, but I’m really inspired by his comic strip style layouts.

Comic Strip Layout with Tonal Shading

The use of some black and white and some tonal shading sketches gives this page a lot of variety. I like that blue-grey he uses for his shading, it adds some warmth, without being warm. Which is in direct conflict with the story of the page – which is how hot it is at night.

Eddie has added a border to the sketch of his dog. The dark contrast of this shading against the white face created an immediate high-contrast focal point. But your eye travels up and down the page because of the spot colour yellow at the top, and red at the bottom. These are thoughtful elements that really help to add weight to the story, in a simple but effective way. I found myself traveling around the page looking at the pictures as individual elements, before realising there was a flow to the story – using a traditional: start in top left, end at the bottom, page layout.

The images at the top and bottom act as bookmarks for everything that’s going on in this page. But he also has the balance a diagonal split on the page – the top left triangle is shaded, and the bottom right triangle is ink line without shading. I’m envious as his skill of being able to convey such an emotive story in such a creative and simple way.

Comic Strip Layout with a Limited Palette

Eddie has used the same blue for the shadows areas, as he used above for his tonal shading. This use of colour harmony helps to create a strong look across all of his sketches. He’s used a standard 4-box square page layout, and sketched his story without speech or thought bubbles, and the only words he’s included in the title at the top of the pages, which gives this layout a journal-entry feel to it.

In each of the comic strip panels he’s used a different approach for colouring the panel. In three of them he’s added additional objects to convey a sense of place. In the most simple one, the only additional element he’s added is a red heart which conveys his emotions as he stands in the rain. There’s a real feeling of colour harmony in these sketches, and I think he’s probably used the same shadow blue at the base for his purple shirt and stormy sky.

These panels could feel darkish and oppressive, but in the top right panel he’s used a lot of negative space, which adds some much needed brightness to this page. Without this variety, the page could have felt flat and oppressive. Eddie has left most of the car white, and the path is also white. What makes this panel so effective is the leading lines he’s used for the path. He’s got such a good understanding of how to use shapes in his panels to make them more dynamic. In the first panel, there’s an organic V-shape, and in the last panel is a reverse L-shape.

Comic Strip Layout with a Complex Palette of Colours

You can see the same use of blue (maybe a French Ultramarine?) for some shading or shadow areas. Most of the other colours have the same tonal and saturation value, which gives this page an interesting, but cohesive, colour harmony.

It looks like he’s used a limited set of primary colours, as the base for creating his secondary colours. The only outliers seem to he the turquoise in the third panel, and a different blue used for sky.

What I like about this 9-panel page layout is the mix of close ups, mid range, and long range views, and how some panels has a lot of background detail, and others have none or minimal.

I really enjoy seeing Eddie’s art showing up in my newsfeed. As soon as I see it, I’m automatically drawn to studying it for a while. His use of colour and negatives space, his page layouts, and also the stories he tells – even when there’s no words to guide us.

Here's more COMIC STRIP PAGE LAYOUT inspiration