This post is sponsored by Michelle Weber, who considers it a bargain for the joy she receives from The Toast. Thank you, Michelle!
MONK #1: if I wanted to illustrate the rain of fire that destroyed Sodom
what should I use for my model
visually I mean
MONK #2: can can dancers
red legs, blue skirts
it’s all the same
MONK #1: oh thanks
and people who have died horribly of burns look –
MONK #2: normal skin but asleep
MONK #1: right, right
MONK #1: how many animals are there in the world, again
MONK #2: eleven
plus four fish
but they’re all trapped, so
MONK #2: remember, the Tower of Babel is a sign of man’s deadly hubris and overweening pride
they tried to reach Heaven itself
so don’t hold back
make it at least one and one half stories high
MONK #1: gotcha
MONK #2: same deal with Jacob’s Ladder
remember: this stretched all the way up to God’s throne
so at least two people could stand comfortably on it at the same time
God is roughly as high up as a medium tree, just for future height referencing
MONK #1: I’m having the toughest time finishing this illustration of Jacob wrestling with the angel for some reason
I never really wrestled as a kid
what does it look like
MONK #2: confused hugging
MONK #1: really?
MONK #2: yeah you’re hugging but you look sort of concerned about it
most concerned face wins, usually
MONK #1: stoning someone must be awfully violent
how would I draw that?
MONK #2: its actually VERY low key
you just drop soft bread rolls around their head until they go away, from dying
MONK #1: oh huh
i never would have guessed that
MONK #2: yeah its sort of counterintuitive
MONK #1: can a man fit through a tower
or like a gate
from a castle
MONK #2: no
that’s why whenever you build a castle you stand in the middle and build around you and then you can’t ever leave
castles are actually super impractical
MONK #1: so war must be pretty hard then huh
MONK #2: not really if you know your strategy
just lean over a wall and pick everyone’s heads up
thats basically it
[Images via]
I love the two monks!!! This is my favorite series on the toast – I seriously want to hire these guys to redesign my apartment. Thank you 🙂
but what I want to know is how many of these dudes had necks?
answer: mostly none, but if they did, they were enormously thick
Oh, the Two Monks really are my favorites! #1, love him. And #2! Love him, too. Thanks Mallory and Michelle Weber for bringing them to life!
As someone who has never used PayPal (because we don’t really have that in Sweden that I know of), could someone please inform me if it’s easy to use or if you need an account or something? I want loving and paying for things to be as simple as possible!
I believe you can just pay with a credit card on the checkout screen without having to create an account. It might be different depending on the country, though.
Thank you so much for helping me to not be my usual procrastinating/inert self. It has been done! No creating of an account was necessary. Now all that’s left is to celebrate with chocolate and search the archives for Best of Two Monks. I feel so optimistic!
oh i’m so glad monk #2 is feeling chiller today
The stoner on the far left totally has a Ferengi forehead.
Hmmm, I never even considered that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah might look like disco sleeping.
Finally, a type of dancing I can do!!
I thought it was group spanking?
I hope there is enough source material for this series to continue indefinitely, or at least hundreds of years into the future. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable demand
I want this also.
Love how Jacob in the ladder one is clearly not asleep but very irritated. “They’re still there aren’t they? Ugh. How am I supposed to not know God was in this place if these assholes won’t shut up?”
Judging from the tower/castle one, going into war was super embarrassing.
Now it becomes clear: All those stonings in the Old Testament are actually just lunch at the Drones Club. Thanks for the epiphany, Mallory!
They should have just stolen a policeman’s hat.
Well, it could get serious if the rolls got stale.
Oh, yeah. Except I thought they were lemons, which would definitely be rougher on the victim than soft rolls. But maybe harder get get hold of out of season.
The sheep general standing on the funnel is pleased. 3 heads is a sure medal winner
I feel like I am pretty much Monk #2 all the time, and my immediate supervisor at work is Monk #1. We get along great, she’s very supportive and always helpful in answering my questions as i gain confidence in my abilities… and she’s probably pulling it all straight out of her ass.
Love love love this series. It is my only hope that the Two Monks be as timeless and immortal as their beautiful and totally logical artwork.
Wouldn’t that make you Monk 1 and her Monk 2?
…. Yep! Yep, it sure would. You are correct.
Somehow my brain just assumed that #1 = first = the source of wisdom and authority, because reasons.
I AM SO HAPPY IN THIS MOMENT
where ARE the heads in the last one? And what’s with the goat?
Do you mean that the goat is there at all, or that it’s on a pedestal, or that it has disturbingly come-hither eyes?
Probably all three. I don’t trust that goat.
Definitely all three. Plus the fact that it seems to be a spectator to a gruesome human war, and it’s enjoying the experience. When the goats rise up against it, don’t say the monks didn’t warn us!
And what is the funnel for?
I hope I’m not the only one who reads the two monks as Father Ted (monk #2) and Father Dougal (monk #1).
Okay, one last time. These [cows] are small. But the ones out there are far away. Small. Far away. Ah, forget it.
I’ve been struggling to place what they remind me of, and this is it! Thank you!
Olde tyme wrestling needed to leave room for Jesus just like at high school dances.
The heck is Jesus holding in the second picture? It looks like some weird otter-man.
Is it Adam? As in, “dominion over the ten other animals, and the four fish, and wait… I lost count. Start over.”
I was wondering if it was supposed to be a man or an ape. Either seems like a good guess, based on fish accuracy.
What the heck is going on in number 3? The ladder on the left isn’t touching the ground, they’re building the most half-assed scaffolding ever, and the guy on the right with the axe is clearly wasted.
Every Animal: A Field Guide
Birds: Black Stork, Woodpecker, Dove, White Stork
Beasts: Sheep Wearing A Hat, Mini Sasquatch, Sullen Lion, Deer, Goat, Smug Rabbit, Bipedal Squirrel-Fox
Fish: Lesser Nosefish, Slightly Bigger Lesser Nosefish, Greater Nosefish, Rightward-Facing Nosefish
AH! It was a mini sasquatch! I always wanted one of those. Also, Sullen Lion is my side project.
Has Monk #2 ever done a TED talk? Because if not, he definitely should, about animals or Alexander the Great or anything, really.
Everything I’ve seen in Two Monks convinces me that these bros are hittin’ the Bénédictine deep.
I had forgotten about the story of Jacob wrestling the angel AND Mallory’s previous ranking of depictions of it until the monks reminded me. Thanks, monks!
Ohmigosh, I’d never seen Mallory’s ranking! Thank you!
And lo, God rained bacon upon the Sodomites.
I like how sad everyone involved with entering the castle looks.
“We didn’t think this through.”
“No. No, we didn’t.”
“But we committed to this. We don’t really have a choice anymore, do we?”
“No.”
“Poop.”
I want to know where the other two dudes’ heads are in the last picture. Or else why the two guys are trying to pick up dudes with no heads.
I may have talked about this before, but at the Bath Abbey in England they have a depiction of Jacob’s Ladder outside the walls. However, they didn’t really know how to indicate angels coming down the ladder, so they just put them upside-down and now they just look like horrifying demons coming to devour your soul:
That is the freakiest Exorcist-style angel I’ve ever seen. Yikes.
That’s amazing!
How did Doctor Who not include this with the Weeping Angels?!?!?!
thank you for this. I saw the very top of the photo and was like CAN IT BE?? it could. it’s like something out of a medieval version of the ring.
Nooooo (weeps quietly, never reads The Toast alone in bed at night again)
Lol, I suppose they figured staring at the backside of an angel carefully and realistically climbing down the ladder wouldn’t give the frisson of holiness you expect from a bona fide Abbey.
I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts. This is amazing.
‘and bring the goat. the goat has to watch or we have to do it all over again.’
Two Monks has lit up my life. When I was on my last cruise, my husband and I wandered around looking at all the ridiculous decorations (she was the Carnival Legend… she had some beauties) and commenting on how the two monks would see them. Much fun.
War is three guys sharing one head being supervised by a sheep? Is this a metaphor for my job?
Now that you put it that way, it might be a metaphor for everyone’s job.
Stoning people with soft bread rolls until they go off from dying must take a while, so I guess that’s why they have a giant clothespin there, to hold the stonee in place.
So very wonderful…
This series makes me feel a lot better about my drawing capabilities.
Ohmigosh, I'd never seen Mallory's ranking! Thank you!
I want to hire Monk #1 to give me gentle pep talks.
I love the guy at the front of #4 whose expression is so 'Do you mind not building a ladder while I am TRYING to SLEEP?'
dang that's a judge-y dang goat
I don't have any skills to realize this, but I would love to see Annoyed Sleeping Guy cut-and-pasted into a lot of the medieval(-ish?) art in the Monks series.