Light & Shadow: The Art of Matt Faulkner

Double page final art illustration for "Monster Who Ate My Peas", written by Danny Schnitzlein, illus.d by me and publ.d by Peachtree. What I wanted to achieve in this one is the experience most kid's have had where their parents, or any grown-up for that matter, simply can't see what is so very obvious to a child. Whether it's something very serious like abuse or something very surreal like a pea-eating monster in the living room. What we can see here is that the grown-ups are busy eating and the only person not oblivious to the drooling mountainous behemoth, (besides Ralph the dog who's just turned his back on the ridiculousness of the whole thing), is the hero's sister. She's too busy offering her veggies to the beastie to care much about how nasty he looks. Most kids will tell you that the coolest stuff always happens out of the corner of your eye.  They also know that the world is just a far more complex and weird place than most grown-ups can acknowledge. We're just too busy focusing on the "important" stuff, such as having careers, paying bills or watching "Dancing With the Stars" to notice what's really going on. That's why we spend so much time on Facebook. Give's us a nice, false sense of boundaries and proportion. Silly us! Water color, gouache, 2000.