Muppet Monday – “Chef’s Kiss!” My MSCA Food Zine Sketchcover

Hey, gang- I’ve got a Swedish Chef skethcover on the menu for today’s Muppet Monday.

I drew this one on a Mid-South Cartoonists Association‘s “The Good, The Bad, and the Sketchy” zine.

You can see my recent Cookie Monster sketchcover that was done on the same MSCA food themed issue by clicking HERE.

I started off with a #2 pencil. Sometimes on my sketchcovers I’ll size/crop the reference photo in Photoshop, print is out, then either lightbox it or create a “carbon paper” with lead to transfer it onto the blank comic cover. For this one I just drew all of the images freehand, starting with the Chef, then the tomato, bread, broccoli, and finally the carrot.

I then broke out my Copic markers and started filling in some of the shadows with a couple different shades of grey. I then started working with a light blue to draw the stripes on his shirt.

I used a couple different shades of blue to color in the logo, along with a golden yellow, and then used a few shades of yellow and beige/flesh for the bread and Chef.

Did more with beige and light brown, and then shades of pinks on the Chef’s nose, tongue, and bow tie, as well as on the veggies.

Followed by different shades of red and orange. Sometimes I’ll use different brands of alcohol markers, but for this illustration I just used my Copics.

I used a couple different greens on the broccoli, and a pale yellow on background. I thought about adding a darker shade of yellow to the background to create a pattern, but decided to keep it simple instead.

I used a couple shades of brown for the Chef’s hair and mustache, and then used a Pigma Micron pen to do the black line work.

I generally use an 03 sized pen to ink with. After the inking was done I used a white Gelly Roll pen to do the highlights.

I created a few highlights, and then went over them with markers. Other highlights I left white, or went over them with a white Prismacolor pencil to smooth out and blend the highlights better.

Once the illustration was completed I sprayed a light coat of Krylon workable fixative over it, let it dry, then scanned and uploaded it. It’s best to spray the art outside or in a well ventilated area.

Speaking of outdoors, my wife Nicki and I have started a garden in our backyard this year. We got two large round raised beds, some grow bags, a moveable self-watering tomato cage/planter (on the patio), a cold compost bin, and a rain barrel. Nicki’s been watching a lot of YouTube videos and has been putting that new knowledge to use growing us some food.

The bees have been busy and seem to love the blossoms in our garden, and all of the flowers we have this year. She’s nicknamed them all “Randy” and they’ve done an awesome job of pollenating for us.

The Luthors also love hanging out in the garden area with us, especially in the shaded areas with the harsh direct sun we’ve been getting.

We’ve got several smaller raised beds for flowers, catnip, and cat grass and our cats love them, too. The catnip and cat grass beds they are allowed to climb up into and enjoy- and boy do they enjoy it.

We also redid our swing- moved it to where it faces our garden, added a new cushion, pillows, planters, edging, solar lights, tiki torches, and built a new shade. The sunflowers in Jarael’s flower bed should start blooming behind it soon. We got to finally spend some time just sitting and enjoying it this weekend.

In the garden our onions and beans haven’t done well (or at all) but we’ve had a lot of success with squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs like dill and basil which are good companion crops.

Everyday we’ve been able to harvest at least one or two of each veggie, some days we’ve gotten several! There have been many time’s in the last few weeks that I’ve ate a cucumber for lunch.

Between the brutal heat and torrential rain I’m really surprised we’ve had any success growing anything, much less the amount of good vegetables. We’ve shared some with one of neighbors and Nicki’s co-workers.

We’re looking to make some homemade ketchup with the ripe tomatoes this week, and have already enjoyed making a few batches of pickles- dill, spicy dill, and bread & butter in chips, chunks, and spears. It’s a pretty simple process and we’ve been adjusting the recipes as we go. So far all have been good, but the bread & butter ones have been our favorites.