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Happy Mother’s Day 2021!

It’s that time of year again, when we collectively pause to appreciate the people that either brought us into this world, raised us, or brought our own children into this world. It’s been a challenging year-which is almost becoming a new cliched thing to say, unfortunately-but while I’m sad to have not been able to spend more time with my family, I am extremely grateful that I didn’t lose anyone close to me to the pandemic (though last year in general was a tough one for losing important people in my life: my grandmother, a close family friend, a young

Happy Mother’s Day, 2020!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. It is a very weird situation to try to celebrate the people in our lives that have played such vital roles during a pandemic when we can’t, or shouldn’t, be physically close. Whether it’s my own mother, my grandmother, my wife, my sister, my aunts…all the mothers in my life and my family have had a positive impact on my life, and it’s very fair to say I wouldn’t be here in one way or another without their love and support over the years. I love you all, and thank you.

Being

Happy Mother’s Day 2019!

Here it is, the 2019 Mother’s Day card for my awesome wife!

Another year, another card for my wife on Mother’s Day. The dragon/kids keep growing. It’s always a challenge to come up with a new image, as I usually try to have it reference something we’ve done of note over the past year. It’s tough when the things of note are often the same, like hikes we’ve taken. We certainly try to hike a lot, so reflecting that is fine. It’s just coming up with scenes and compositions that aren’t

Gallery Update: Let There Be Star Wars!

On December 15th, the wife and I decided to surprise the kids after school by taking them to the first pre-opening day showing of Rogue One (yes, I thought it was awesome. This is not news). For a while now, I’ve been thinking it would be fun to do some PMD illustrations outside of IPMDT to commemorate certain events or happenings. Star Wars Rogue One was the perfect event, given the overall significance of Star Wars in my creative life. I’ve always thought of Plunger Monkey as somewhat of my alter ego, a manifestation of some of the crazier parts

Insert Clever Title Here

Alright, trying to get back into some kind of productive nightly ritual and put my tablet to good use. I have several other post ideas, but I’m skipping over those to get to this one…I just can’t come up with a title…

I love working digitally, but I miss “traditional” media. It’s part of the reason I’ve been drawing It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time! exclusively the old-fashioned way, then scanning, tweaking, and formating the panels into strips. I like the feel of pencil and ink on different textures of paper. I like erasing the pencil lines to fully reveal the crisp,

Studio Stuff: My New Grown Up Pencil Box

What?! Another blog post?! Yes! Is the world coming to an end? I have no idea, but I’m going with “no”. I’m really loving having this digital sketchbook/tablet to get some work done at night. While unwinding in front of the tv, I did some relaxed doodling on a digital sketch I started last week at camp (I think I’m done with it, I’ll post it at some point), I uploaded another batch of moleskin sketches to the gallery (the post about those will come later this week), and now I’m writing this here post about my snazzy new pen

Life and Stuff…

Wow, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? There are lots of reasons for that. Summer vacation started, which means my studio hours get seriously truncated and interrupted. Two of my sons decided to have medical problems that required some surgery (one of them an emergency case, but both are fine and back to driving each other nuts). I finally got the help I needed to do some serious repairs to my barn. Basically: life. It’s a struggle not to get swept up in the frustration of not having enough studio time, let alone time to keep this website up

Gallery Update: Happy Day After Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, particularly my own mother and my wife. You may recall the lengthy retrospective-type post I did last year of all my hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards that I’ve been making for my wife since our first child was born. Well, this is 2016’s:

Toby-Gray-MD-2016 Those are supposed to be stars spelling out “Happy Mother’s Day”, but I don’t think I went dark enough with the sky for it to “pop”.

All this drawing I’ve been doing since the Inktober challenge has really

It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time!

I’ve been hinting at it for weeks now, but it’s finally up and running! The official It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time! comic strip! I had no idea when I embarked on the Inktober challenge last year that it would eventually lead me to something that’s been a pipe dream clattering around my brain for years. One of the many reasons I had never featured PMD in his own comic of any type was that I was having a hard time nailing down his personality and how I wanted to “use” him. I had this vague sense of who he was,

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