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T is for Talos

In Greek mythology, Talos is a giant made out of bronze that Zeus sent to protect his hottie-of-the-week Europa on the island of Crete. Talos patrolled the shores thrice daily and heaved huge rocks at any sketchy lookin' boats that got close to the island. Even though he was a GIANT MADE OUT OF BRONZE for God's sake, he was also imbued with the power to glow red-hot and take intruders in a fatal embrace - I guess this was in case he somehow couldn't crush them with rocks. Or his fists. Or his feet. Or whatever.

Talos, however seemingly invincible he might seem, was crafted with a tiny little weak spot in his ankle - a small vein that was the supplier of lifeforce to this towering automaton. And of course, when Jason and his Argonaut buddies came bopping along, some lucky chump named Poeas, probably aiming for Talos's head, missed horribly and struck him in the ankle. End of Bronzy.

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S is for Serqet

The Egyptian scorpion goddess was a deity of poisons, snake bites, and obviously, scorpion stings - either dishing out stings to unrighteous jerks or curing the effects of poisonous bites and stings. Serqet was also commonly known as a funerary deity with the delightfully morbid job of protecting embalmed entrails and was considered either a companion to Isis or an aspect of Isis.

Boringly, Serqet was usually portrayed as either a scorpion or a woman with a scorpion on her head. I think she needed a visual upgrade.

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Another work sketch just to pass the time. This is a detail for a larger scene that was done for a RPG book cover. I like how the poses of the adventurers came out - I didn't have to rely on fun costume details to make it work!

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This is going old school.

I was continuing my ongoing odyssey of cleaning/reorganizing my studio and dug up this drawing out of a big pile of crap. I'd say it's from the mid 90's - maybe around '95 or '96. Back then, I was all about space marines and military crap. And also boobs - but that part hasn't changed much.

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Yet another dip into my job scans for the latest drawblog entry. Consider this delightful family portrait of fungus weirdos a preview for my upcoming book of drawings. This drawing was subsequently painted - but was nixed from the book it was supposed to be in. Cry for the mushroom people. Cry for them.......

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Man, it's been too long. Way too long. I've had a really busy and distracting Summer - compounded by sketch-laziness and you get a serious drought of drawblog updates.

As of late though, my studio work has been focusing on a little book project I am just now finishing up. It is relevant to this blog in that it is a book of my pencil work - chock full of it, to be exact. Mostly professional stuff, preliminary drawings for paintings, thumbnails sketches, and some finished pencil illustrations - there's also some plain old sketchbook stuff and I have included a smattering of my drawblog entries as well. With luck, I'll be sending that off to the printer sometime in the next week or so to have ready and available by November. I'll let you know more details as they come in.

For this entry, just to get something, ANYTHING, posted, I'm showing a Magic: the Gathering sketch I did for a card called Berserk. Don't worry though, I do plan to finish my alphabet of mythological figures - I'll come back to that when I can!

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R is for Raktavija

This gargantuan Hindu demon teamed up with other demons to deal an assortment of horrors all over the place. Raktavija had the grisly charm that if ever his blood was spilled, another Raktavija would spring up from every droplet! Eegads, that's a problem! He sounds like a really infuriating level boss for an old Nintendo game or something. Anyway, Kali was eventually sent to deal with this bullshit bastard - finally coming up with the idea to drink all his blood and then kick his ass into oblivion. Nice.