north, dhio, kaia.  photoshop.

The young god, the old god, and the mortal monster man who the two gods liked enough to make immortal so they could be together forever.  Ha ha ha, so many people have asked me lately when I’m gonna do a comic about these guys.  The answer is: ????? the future ?????  I’m really thankful they resonate with people, though!

Hey so I’m going to be out of the country from the 12th to the 24th of April, so this blog is going to be fairly quiet until then.  Ananth will continue updating over at Johnny Wander in my absence and I’ll hopefully be able to update dumb photos over at my twitter whenever there’s free wifi access.  Take care, guys!

her hair like blood.  pencil, photoshop.

Another old sketch that I dug out and colored.  Gosh I hope there’s no kids watching this blog.  Go away, kids.  Come back in a week.

Death and the Hearth.  Pencil, photoshop.

There’s a open ballot to vote for the names of Pluto’s two unnamed moons and let-me-say-right-now, I am a huge supporter of one of them being named Persephone.  (Well it should technically be Prosperpina/Prosperpine if you’re going for the Roman names but I digress.)  The whole thing’s made me think a bunch about my own Hades and Persephone analogues; Dhio being an irritable creepy god of what people (mistakenly) assume is death and Kaia being an even-temepered goddess of the hearth and domesticated animals.

Anyway what I’m getting at is that, despite its being in first place, Vulcan really isn’t an appropriate name for a frigid moon of a dwarf planet.

Dhio and Kaia.  Photoshop.

Sketched this a while ago as a redraw of something from 2003 and then it accidentally wound up getting finished.  That seems to be happening a lot lately.

I never seem to draw Dhio as a man, but that’s how he spends like 99% of his time.  There’s just something really fun about drawing a tiny girl hanging out with a gigantic monster.

beast husbaaandsss

Kaia and Dhio painting, animated process gif.

I made a little process gif of how I made the previous painting.  Ha ha, I have this bad habit of digitally noodling with real media stuff until it looks digital.  Gotta looooosen uuuup

I should probably mention, the actual painting is super tiny, maybe 4”x4”.

Kaia and Dhio.  ink wash, watercolor, pencil, white paint. (process gif here)

After doing the Exquisite Beast for a year, I’ve been meaning to push myself more with real media, maybe emulate something similar to the whimsical lineless stuff maruti-bitamin and tir-ri do, or the mixed media paintings Sam Bosma seems to be able to churn out in his sleep.

Anyway, I seem to be on a Beast Husband kick.  I think it started about a decade or two ago and expect it to putter out around the time I die.

Kaia.  Photoshop.

This was a spot illustration I did just for the Benign Kingdom book, which you can pick up in our TopatoCo shop.  By the way!  Did you know that Johnny Wander moved to TopatoCo?  Let-me-tell-you, it is so nice having competent people taking care of our distribution.  (Because Ananth and I were taking care of it ourselves before)

Benign Kingdom Poster Quadrant.  Photoshop.

For the Benign Kingdom kickstarter poster, me and KC and Becky and Evan each did a quadrant of a heraldic shield based on our book covers.  I’ve had so much fun doing this project and drawing my characters has been this awesome icing on the cake.  What is cooler than drawing a lady riding side-saddle on top of a giant dog?  Nothin’.

The Kickstarter is still going if you’re interested in picking up the art books!  The price will go up after they’ve been printed, so it might be a good idea to get them before the end of the month.  Thanks everyone, for your interest and support!

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!

Naptime for Beasts (North, Kaia, and Dhio).  pencil sketch, touched up and colored in photoshop.

Whelp, looks like I’m still doodling these guys everywhere.  Guess this makes three in the series now?  I promise I’ve actually redesigned some other old pantheon gods, I’m just really partial to these fellas.

Things might get a little slow during December.  There’s some pretty crazy stuff coming up for me.

Dhio’s Diary Comic: Day 1.  Oh god what am I doing

Oh sure, the first time I put these guys in a comic it’s a parody.  Jeez, priorities.

Someone on Twitter requested a Beast-God Diary Comic and I started cackling and was unable to do real work until I made this. 8|

Kaia and her best bro.  Pencil sketch, colored in Photoshop.

Yup, Kaia’s two best pals are beast-men.  Maybe it’s that I’m amused by the idea of two huge monsters being dominated by a teeny girl?  Who knows.

North (you might recognize him) isn’t a god like Kaia and Dhio— although his species is technically a kind of dragon, which puts him genetically into this long-lived shape-shifting demi-god-ish category.  He is supposed to have these vestigial dinosaur fingers on his wings to echo his beast-man design, but I forgot them in the sketch— just, uh, pretend they’re tucked in or something.

Dhio and his lovely wife.  Pencil sketch, colored in Photoshop.

Continuing in the same series of doodles as the last drawing, Dhio and Kaia.  Kaia is the one god of the Simurran pantheon who didn’t start out as a prehistoric beast.  (It’s a long story.)  Anyway, the two are married.  It’s less odd when Dhio takes the shape of a man, but I love drawing these two with a Strength tarot card-themed imagery.

I draw pretty small, part 3. (with an old wheat penny for scale.)

Another full page out of my sketchbook, no cleanups or anything.  North, Kaia, and Dhio up top, Jonah (Kaia and Dhio’s eventual kid) at the side, and a buncha Beast-Man Norths in the middle there.  And some JW thumbnails at the bottom, with some scribbly pre-thumbnail thumbnails.  You can see the shadow of the JW comic on the next page if you squint.

Whenever I’m about to start brush inking, I’ll do a small warmup to make sure my hand is steady and the ink is flowing well.  The little portraits are basically the ideal size for it, so I have a bunch of them floating around.  So thanks, North.  You’re a trooper.