Bird Dragon. 1999. Nostalgia Monday.
I remember drawing this in a hotel room while staying in Atlantic City with my mom for a teaching conference. It’s admittedly pretty neat to see what difference a year makes!
Well, uh, yeah, and then there’s the coloring. Listen, I was taking a class at the local community college to learn how to use Photoshop 5 and I thought that “render clouds” was the coolest thing. You gotta cut me some slack, I was 13 or 14.
The first official collaboration between Yuko Ota and myself. I made the mistake of sitting her in front of my computer last night to doodle and she started drawing this amazingly trashy romance cover. Instead of moving on with our lives, however, together we put together this picture. I apologize to all of humanity for it.
Most of the line art is Yuko and most of the colors are mine. Also, the contorted spine is very much intentional.
So, this is a thing that happened last night? I’ve been threatening to draw Kim and Balthazar in a romance novel cover for a while now, and then Aaron told me to draw something on his cintiq, and then I did, and then I Aaron and I were hanging out until 2AM finishing it… so, uh.
oh my god radnar what are you doing, stop that
The Eighth Beast.
I am going to be honest, I felt that we were becoming complacent with the evolutions so I just went out of my way to take the beast into an odd turn.
Tail fins have migrated to the beast’s back and become more well-defined. Eyes are now fully socketed, and the eye ridges have extended and end with more eyes. Talons have become more hoof-like, lower jaw has extended into a bit of an underbite.
We’ve been seeing some amazing evolutions, challenges, and other cool things being made based on this project! Please keep them up, we love seeing them!
I had a lot of fun with this one — I decided just to make it WEIRDER, with no biological imperative in mind. He kind of turned into a Jabberwocky, which suits me just fine.
Benign Kingdom Cover. Photoshop.
Hey so, if you’ve ever looked through this blog and thought you’d like an artbook from me, here’s your chance! Becky, KC, Evan, and myself just put up a Kickstarter for a series of art books called Benign Kingdom. Each of us did our cover and poster art with the theme “benign kingdom,” and I had to take the chance to draw Kaia and Dhio.
Watch the video while you’re there, you can see me nervously fidgeting around a bunch and holding a kitten!
The sixth beast.
The beast is becoming fully quadrupedal, completely freeing its arms for manipulation. It now also has some sort of lower jaw. Eye-stalks are compressing, the frill display is becoming larger and meatier, and the lower “tails” have become defined weight-bearing back legs.
If you didn’t see it, Aaron Diaz did some crazy Exquisite Beast evolutions over at his blog! Vondell Swain did some as well! Evan and I are delighted by the interest people are taking in this, and if you want to start your own Exquisite Beast project, please do!
More of these dudes. It’s happening slowly, but I feel like I’m very gradually getting better at ink washes and using strong spot blacks and stuff.
Mermaid Illustration for Scurvy Dogs. Inked drawing, colored in Photoshop.
Here’s the full finished version of this illustration! What a cool, fun project to do — as much as I love drawing monsters and drawing ladies, drawing monster ladies is the bee’s knees.
As I mentioned in the initial post, I was uninterested in doing a “traditional” sexy mermaid design and went instead for something bestial — body based primarily off a frill shark, coloring based primarily off a dusky dolphin. I wanted a bit of a texture on the back so there’s some tiger shark mottling. Was going back and forth over adding a bit of bioluminescence, but then realized the tiger shark patterning would only occur on animals who hang out in more shallow water and bioluminescence wouldn’t make any biological sense, so it was left out.
This illustration was done for a card for the Scurvy Dogs board game. It will only be available in the special edition version of the game, available here.
A Totally Sweet Fan Pokémon. 1999. Nostalgia Monday.
Wow, you guys were really on about seeing my old pokémon fanart!
This was probably my first digitally colored picture, done in some terrible photo-retouching program that doesn’t exist anymore and probably came free with our scanner. Pokémon Red and Blue had just been released in the states and there was a contest being put on by a fansite to design a fourth legendary bird. I either placed first or second and won like four packs of Pokémon cards and that was just about the coolest thing that’d ever happened to me. At the very least, it was the first time I’d seen any sort of payoff for my art.
Actually now that I think about it, this was a really important picture.
The fourth beast.
The bottom mouth-appendages are becoming more like arms, and covered in cilia for manipulation. At the same time, the bottom tail growths at the back are possibly becoming more like weight-bearing appendages. The tails are becoming fan-like, likely as a sort of signal or display.
My second update over at The Exquisite Beast. This one is my favorite that I’ve done so far! It’s been challenging doing the ink washes, I’m so accustomed to using digital media, haha.
We are having a release party on Friday the 13th, I’m sure that’s not ominous at all
We’re having a release party for Johnny Wander Vol. 2 tomorrow at Bergen St. Comics if you are in the NYC area! Lela made a jillion chocolate chip and vegan peanutbutter cookies and there will be free drinks and stuff if you want to come by! John and Conrad and Ananth and I will be doing a live reading of some of the John Advice column and I’ll draw stuff for you and there will probably be some other cool cartoonists in attendance as well.
I’ve never had a release party before and have no idea what to expect. But I’m staying optimistic! And anxious, that too.
Hidden Dragon. 1998. Nostalgia Monday.
Sorry, I forgot about Nostalgia Monday for a few weeks there. Here’s the followup from a month after this picture. This was the first piece of art I ever put on the internet.
I still couldn’t entirely grasp the anatomy (wow, check out all those joints), but it’s kinda crazy seeing the jump in understanding between the last picture and this one. Good job, 12-year-old me.
Over the holiday I stumbled across my old 486 backup! I’d forgotten how much pokémon fanart I drew in my early teens. 8|
#2
I tried to push the beast towards some sort of predatory burrowing creature. An extra eye appeared to give depth perception. The back “tails” are meant to mirror the front, either as a lure or a false face.
Thank you everyone for your interest and enthusiasm in this project! I hope you all enjoy it as much as Evan and I have been.
Evan and I have started a new collaborative project called The Exquisite Beast! Essentially, we will be creating successive evolutionary steps of a fantastical monster. We are both super excited about this project! I hope you will be, too!
The Exquisite Beast will update on Tuesdays and Fridays by Evan and myself respectively. I hope you guys enjoy it!
Happy New Year 2012. johnny wander comic.
An excuse to draw a dragon? For me? Oh 2012, you shouldn’t have.
2011 Monthly Art Meme: Terrible Version. (click “high res” for animation, or go here)
Y-yeah, I guess I drew some less respectable art, too. August’s picture was only ever posted on twitter, but guess I had to go rectify that.
Welllllp.
2011 Monthly Art Meme.
Happy New Year, guys! Here is some art that I did over the past year! I usually try to fill these things with exclusively personal art and projects, but a bunch of months wound up being filled with paid work, professional work, and fanart. (Which, uh, I drew a lot of this year, and thanks for bearing with me.) Here’s last year’s chart.
Sorry for being off the radar this week! I’ll have some cool things for you guys in the near future, I promise.
grüss vom death und cecilia. photoshop.
Today’s comic over at Johnny Wander, with Death and Cecilia dressed as Krampus and St. Nicholas. We wanted to do something festive-y since it’ll be our last update before Christmas. Ananth did a really fun news post with some really neat vintage postcards over in the blog, too.
I’m have some neat Kramupses queued up over at my reference blog, so keep an eye out on Christmas Eve and Christmas!
