Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE, now available - take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

monsters

15 re-imagined kids' monster drawings that will make you shriek with joy.

Get ready to scream ... with delight over these awesome monsters.

What's Halloween without some creepy monsters to haunt your dreams?

Image by Trey Wadsworth/The Monster Project.

That's exactly what Katie Johnson, the creator of The Monster Project thinks — except in her case, monsters haunt her dreams (in the best way) all year long.

Johnson began drawing monsters when she was younger to jumpstart her creative process. Today, she uses monsters to help kids learn about the magic of artistic expression.

"Monsters can be anything," Johnson explained over an email. "They can be short or tall, angry or happy, as big as a planet or as small as a pea. There are infinite possibilities when you're drawing a monster and there are no wrong answers."

The Monster Project offers kids the chance to see their monster drawings brought to life by professional artists.

Originally Johnson was the sole participating artist, but soon, she invited her peers to help out. "It really just clicked into place that the more artists I could involve, the richer the experience would be for the kids," writes Johnson.

Eventually word spread through artist communities, and now Johnson has over 1,000 artists at The Monster Project's disposal. The artists pick from drawings the kids submit and illustrate them, and at the end of the process, the kids get to see the illustration and a video message from the artist who made it.

Here's 15 of The Monster Project's 100 new monsters and the professional artists who brought them to life — just in time for Halloween

1. This triangle-headed monster by Riccardo Zema

All images from The Monster Project, used with permission.

2. A spacey frog alien by Stuart Wade

3. A flower factory robot by Oliver Sin

4. This marshmallow-stone-eating dragon by Stuart Wade

5. A creepy skeleton king by Stefano Colferai

6. A singing cat monster with heart eyes by Sergio Chaves

7. This panda-loving gumdrop monster by Chris Schofield

8. A wild-haired art enthusiast monster by Agata Karelus

9. A ghost-hunting mad red dog by Luis Pinto

10. A critical lady monster by Aleksey Baydakov

11. A building-hugging wooly monster by Alex Jefferies

12. A casual gremlin by Trey Wadsworth

13. A glorious tree monster by Milan Vasek

14. A dragon tornado by Christi du Toit

15. This colorful rainbow mohawk kitty monster by Bakea

It just goes to show that monsters can be awesome in any form. What's most spooktacular about these monsters is how they help kids flex their creative muscles.

Despite the fact that the arts have been shown to help students perform better across the board, many schools can't afford to keep their art education programs due to budget cuts. That's why Monster Project is working to make their services free to schools in low-income areas that have had to do away with them.

They're getting there with the help of donations and an online shop where you can buy things like a monster activity book made up of the artists' monster recreations. The Monster Project is also having a gallery showing in San Francisco in December thanks to an Adobe sponsorship.

Johnson's goal is to keep expanding until The Monster Project can offer recreated monsters to kids in need of a creative outlet all across the country.

To think that all of this came from one woman who recognized what great power monsters have — both on and off the page. That's scary cool.

Professional artists re-created children's monster doodles. They're hideously cool.

Artist and designer Katie Johnson has a thing for monsters.

Not those of the morbid variety, but the cutesy, kid-friendly kind.

GIF from "Monsters, Inc."

She's always loved the wide-open creative process of dreaming up a new monster and putting it on paper. "It's a fun creative dump," she said. "You can make a monster out of anything. So when I was younger, that was my go-to when I felt like drawing."

Katie Johnson (right) ponders her next monster. Photo used with permission.

Little did she know, monsters would come to dominate her free time as a young adult, too. After college, Johnson started working as a designer with an advertising firm in Austin, Texas. But as a creative at heart, she also wanted to pursue her own projects.

An idea came to her after seeing a photo series called "Wonderland" by artist Yeondoo Jung, who re-created children's drawings as staged, dream-like photographs.

Johnson combined her love of monsters with Jung's idea of building on children's creativity to launch The Monster Project.

Through The Monster Project, Johnson invites elementary students to draw their own monsters. Then professional artists bring their monsters to life.

Getting started wasn't easy because she was the only artist on call. "I did 20 drawings by myself," Johnson said. "It was way too much."

She also wasn't meeting one of her most important objectives: "It was missing multiple artistic perspectives. I wanted the kids to see different ways to be creative."

Image from The Monster Project/Greatest Common Factory/Vimeo.

So Johnson grew a small army of artists to help students discover their own inner artists and see the potential of their ideas. And though they're all volunteers, they definitely get something out of it.

"We have to admit, this isn't just for the kids," says their website. "What a refreshing opportunity it is to be offered a glimpse into someone else's head — especially the fantastically bizarre, unobstructed thoughts of a child. It’s an amazing opportunity."

Here's a sampling from the project's more than 100 re-created drawings:

Re-created by Gianluca Maruotti.

Re-created by Marija Tiurina.

Re-created by Muti.

Re-created by Milan Vasek.

Re-created by Marie Bergeron.

Re-created by JeanPierre Le Roux.

Re-created by Jake Armstrong.

Re-created by Jenya Tkach.

Re-created by Muti.

Re-created by Cream.

Re-created by Charles Santoso.

Re-created by Teodoru Badiu.

Re-created by Eric Orange.

Re-created by Aaron Zenz.

Re-created by Patrick Evrard.

Re-created by Yema Yema.

Re-created by AJ Jefferies.

The project isn't just about drawing monsters. It's about painting a picture of how vital arts are to a good education.

The website explains: "With a decreasing emphasis on arts in schools, many children don’t have the opportunity for creative exploration they deserve. That’s a monstrous trend we would like to destroy."

Image from The Monster Project/Greatest Common Factory/Vimeo.

The National Federation of State High School Associations notes that when state budget cuts are imposed on public K-12 education, "fine arts programs are often an easy victim," especially at the elementary level, when exposure to arts can have the greatest impact on students. That seems pretty counterintuitive when you look at the research.

Image from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

A 2011 report by a committee appointed by President Obama explained that a high-quality arts education can enhance a child's performance across subject areas, boost their self-confidence and motivate them to take on greater intellectual challenges, and even help them develop other important competencies in problem-solving, critical and creative thinking, and teamwork.

Johnson wants to make sure it's not just the well-funded schools that have access to her program.

That's why they're working to make The Monster Project a sustainable organization that won't be a cost burden to families or schools, which is especially important since they're targeting schools in lower-income areas that have had to eliminate arts programs to preserve those subjects on standardized tests, like math and science.

In order to fund the project, they're accepting donations and opening an online store, where they'll sell prints and the soon-to-come Monster Project children's activity book. They hope to raise enough money to expand to more schools and launch after-school arts workshops in communities that really need them.

Monsters. Who'd have thought they could be such a force for good?

Watch an introduction The Monster Project:

From Your Site Articles