Nov 07 2011
You can follow the other “D” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.
Here’s one from the second Monster Manual…
D is for Diakk
The original art for this is for sale here.
Nov 01 2011
It’s a four-fer! (?) Here’s a #PortraitNight drawing of Pink Floyd, taken from the cover of the last MOJO Magazine. I did this at the Winston-Salem Comic & Toy fair weekend before last. Like most red-blooded American males, I had a “Pink Floyd phase” in high school, but these days the only stuff of theirs I really ever revisit is the pre-Dark Side Of The Moon stuff–Obscured By Clouds and Meddle are my faves.
If you’d like to suggest a #PortraitNight subject, you can do so either via the comments section here, or via my Twitter.
Oct 31 2011
Here’s the “C” entry in my Dungeons & Dragons-themed AlphaBeasts series. I love the hilariously-written entry on this creature in the original Monster Manual. It begins with: “This nightmare creature is loathsome beyond description and has no redeeming features.”
You can follow the other “C” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.
C is for Catoblepas
The original art for this is for sale here.
Oct 25 2011
I had fun with tonight’s #PortraitNight. The subject is Iggy Pop, one of my favorite musicians, but instead of one of my usual headshot images, I decided to recreate the back cover of Iggy’s third (and underrated in my opinion) solo album, New Values. I’ve been listening to that record a lot these days ’cause I lucked upon a stash of four reasonably priced Iggy/Stooges LPs at a local shop. Score!
If you’d like to suggest a #PortraitNight subject, you can do so either via the comments section here, or via my Twitter.
Oct 25 2011
OK, “abandoned” isn’t the most accurate turn of phrase–maybe “on hold for the time being” is better. Anyway… a while back, my then-agent and I were mulling over possible projects to pursue and one possibility that came up was a proposal to adapt an existing book for the great SF/fantasy publisher Tor Books. Looking over my bookshelf for potential books to adapt, the first thing that occurred to me was Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia, which I wrote about a bit here, but what ultimately seemed like the most viable option was a more recent novel: Cherie Priest’s amazing steampunk zombie adventure Boneshaker.
If you know my comics, you’re probably thinking something steampunk would be an odd departure for me, but consider this about Boneshaker: (1) Unlike most steampunk, it’s set in the United States, (2) It’s set during an alternate Civil War era (3) it’s got airships! As I looked to working up some drawings for this, I made a deliberate effort to avoid for the most part visual references that dealt with steampunk and instead sought out historical imagery from the American Civil War. My approach to this was just to forget about “steampunk” entirely and to approach the project as an alternate history of the Civil War.
Ultimately, what hung me up was the zombie aspect. I did a lot of research and a fair amount of sketchbook doodling, but I never could figure out a way to depict zombies that was sufficiently non-cliché. I started looking at images of mummies and the like, thinking that that’d be a potential route to pursue visually, but the text is pretty specific in its descriptions of the zombies and I decided that approach would diverge too far from the base material.
Anyway… as I said, this is more “on hold” at the moment than truly abandoned. If some visual zombie inspiration strikes me, I’ll for sure jump back on this and maybe work up a full proposal. Tor was nice enough to send me a copy of Stephen Hunt’s The Court Of The Air, which I’m dying to read–although I (foolishly, I guess) started in on The Song of Fire and Ice series and that’s the kind of thing I have a hard time putting down mid-stream.
In the meantime, here’re a few images just for fun: two of the airships from the book plus a sketch of the book’s main character, Briar Wilkes.
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