Once upon a time, when I was about six years old, I announced that I would be painting one monster per night. As with most of my schemes and plans, I got a few nights into it and then lost interest or gave up. But, I have always been interested in colorful, adorable monsters, and I remember wishing so badly that I had been the one to come up with Alf, or E.T. or Baby Sinclair. The monster illustration bug got me again when I was 31–I drew one creature and, again, lost interest, mostly because I realized that my illustration skills needed refining.

I also have always loved color–48+ color paint and marker sets are always enticing to me, and when I shop for fabric I’m always drawn to the loudest and boldest prints–but never get them. But, I’ve never felt skilled at putting colors together, and when I was doing plush based on real animals, I tended to work mostly in neutrals, looking back longingly at the rainbow fur. The only place I’ve really indulged in my love of color is with my addiction to rainbow sprinkles and frosted Lofthouse cookies.

Then, just over this past year, almost by accident, I began rendering my monster fantasies in plush form, and I am absolutely thrilled with the results. As I mentioned in other posts, I really relate to odd–yet cute–monstrosities, even more to some extent than the real-life animals that I love. It occurred to me with this most recent creature variation–which I call the Purple People Pleaser– that it would look amazing in different bold and playful colors–like a frosted sprinkle cookie in doll form! I love it in purple and look forward to trying more colors.

What is the point of all this? Two things:

1) I spent a lot of time improving my illustration and color theory skills by practicing, studying, looking things up and taking lots of Skillshare classes during my free trial LOL. I didn’t do all that with the goal of making these colorful monsters, but rather as parts of my other plush-making and illustration goals. That relentless study and practice gave me the dexterity to very organically make what I really wanted to make all along: adorable monstrosities. Kind of like when someone practices guitar a lot and can noodle without thinking about it.

2) Sometimes themes travel with you for a long time before they finally find a way to express themselves. All of my intensely hard work teaching myself flat pattern drafting for apparel, and all of that learning about design and color really coalesced into something that I loved all along, but which I didn’t really try that hard to do either when I was six nor when I was older.

So, I guess my message is to just keep plugging away and, if necessary, take the time to learn some new skills, and allow yourself to flop around in the process. It’ll all work out in the end.

This Purple People Pleaser Ogre will be available in my Etsy shop soon–be sure to sign up for my mailing list to be notified when!