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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.

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Q is for Quetzalcoatl

The plumed serpent god of ancient Central America drew an enormous cult of followers in the Aztecs. And as everyone knows, the Aztecs didn't need to look far for a good reason to sacrifice humans. Quetzy himself, in fact, gave the Aztecs reason enough to wage war on, well, pretty much everyone, simply to capture lots and lots of people to sacrifice to the snake-bird god. What a pleasant era to live in Central America - it must have been so much fun.

Sorry for my long hiatus from the alphabet - I had a bottleneck of projects and then a week-long trip to Colorado. Still have lots of work but I think I can squeeze in some mythological beings now and again.....

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P is for Polyphemus

The Cycloptic shepherd son of Poseidon lived upon the island of Sicily - where, bringing in his herd of sheep one fine day, he happened upon Odysseus and company goofing off in his cave. Polyphemus trapped the Greeks in the cave and began to snack upon them as if they were delicious Feta-flavored jerked beef. Ah, but clever Odysseus got the giant Cyclops totally wasted on wine, stabbed him in the eye, and escaped the cave clinging to the underside of Polyphemus's sheep.

To this day you can still hear the Cyclops bellowing curses at Odysseus - for he will never again be able to look at his stack of "BUSTY ONE-EYES" magazines.

Origins!

Check out my lame no-sketch post!!!!! Well, I'll go back and delete this sucker in a couple days - I just wanted to tell everyone (most notably those of you in the central ohio region) that I will be manning a table at the Origins gaming convention at the Columbus Convention Center from thursday through sunday. I'll have a whole heap of my artwork there as I try and trick people into buying it if only to use as litter liners. There should be some nice artists there including Guest-of-Honor Wayne Reynolds who does some supremely fun and detailed fantasy work. I don't know how much admission is but if you have the time and a fistful of dollars, swing by and check it out.

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O is for Oceanus

A sea god in Greek mythology, Oceanus was the son of Gaia and Uranus (hee hee hee....your anus....). As the personification of the river of the same name that circled the Earth (from which all other rivers flowed), he was the father of all other sea gods and nymphs except Poseidon. Dude did some fathering, eh? Child support must be a bitch.

I wasn't too interested in Oceanus at first as he was described as being an old man with bull horns. Wha? Upon slightly more research though, I found out his horns were actually crab claws and he had the body of a fish or snake. Sweet. You had me at crab claw horns......

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N is for Na Kika

The Octopus God of Micronesian mythology (specifically the Gilbert Islands) was the son of the primeval creator gods Na Atibu and Nei Teukez - and his many arms proved indispensable in pulling together all the billions of tons of sand and rock to build the archipelagos of the South Pacific.  That is a lot of work, man.

Between my three books and the internet, I couldn't find much more about this octo-guy than what I just wrote - and certainly no visual reference.  I couldn't figure out if Na Kika was an Octopus or a humanoid - or a crazy combination of both.  When in doubt though, always go with the crazy combination of both.

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M is for Mammon

Mammon is a demon of Christian lore and is the embodiment of the evils of avarice: the insatiable greed for riches - and riches as an object of worship and greedy pursuit.  From the Bible: "No one can serve two masters. for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Mammon."

There were a couple good M mythical figures but I had to do Mammon because frankly, I think that greed is the most despicable attribute of humans - unfortunately, there are signs of Mammonism all around us all the time - people making decisions motivated entirely by the pursuit to make as much money as possible no matter what the cost.

Plus, I figured it'd be fun to draw a gross demon.

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L is for Lady-of-the-Lake

The Lady was a Celtic enchantress that lived in a castle in the middle of a lake.  She raised Lancelot and tossed Arthur that wacky sword and probably did some other mystical crap in between.

Frankly, "L" had a pretty lame assortment to choose from and I just couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the oft-depicted lake dame.  I guess I could have made her a fish-woman or a weedy hag or big and fat just to do something different - but I just want to get past L and back to the good stuff!

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K is for Kali

The most destructive aspect of the Hindu goddess Devi, Kali is an incarnation of annihilation - sent to Earth to destroy demons and probably whatever else was nearby while she was destroying demons.  Well, Kali, wearing her favorite necklace of skulls and a designer skirt made out of human arms, went about her job of laying waste with so much gusto that she didn't even realize it when she cut down her own husband Shiva who was probably just asking if she wanted lentils for dinner. 

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J is for Jormungandr

Fathered by Loki, the gargantuan sea serpent Jormungandr has a pretty important role in Norse mythology - or at least will eventually - as Jormy's role hasn't happened yet.  You see at Ragnarok, the epic serpent  is destined to bust onto the scene and cause all sorts of problems like spreading clouds of poison, steal library books, etc.  It will culminate in one last head-to-head fight with Thor - they will trade body blows until Jormungandr will finally be slain.  Unfortunately, Thor will then drown in the sea serpent's venom.  Booyah!

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I is for Ixchel

The malevolent moon goddess in the Mayan pantheon, Ixchel was often shown as a withered old woman crowned with a snake and wearing a skirt decorated with crossed bones (actually that sounds like normal attire for girls at rock concerts - those crazy youths).  In her clawed hands she held a vessel filled with destruction which she not-so-nicely pours out onto the Earth.

I almost did the Mayan goddess of suicide, Ixtab - I'm not kidding, they had a goddess of friggin' suicide!  Even better, the goddess of suicide is a partially decomposed corpse hanging in a noose from a tree limb.

Ya gotta give it to those Mayans, even their least morbid gods probably ate brains and pulled teeth and wore flayed human skins.

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H is for Hino

The God of Thunder and guardian of the heavens in Iroquois mythology - a hater and destroyer of monsters and other scumbaggy spirits.  Armed with a tremendous bow and arrows of flame - Hino saved the humans from the mighty serpent of the Great Lakes and sent it back to the sky to lick its wounds.  

There is no mention of whether Hino can defeat the loathsome Zebra Mussel - but I can only assume that a giant flaming arrow or two would probably do the trick.

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G is for Ga-gorib

According to the Hottentot peoples of southwestern Africa, Ga-gorib is a horrid monster that sits on the edge of a deep pit and challenges passers-by to hurl stones at him.  The stones always rebounded and killed the thrower, whose body would topple into Ga-gorib's pit.  But along came a hero named Heitsi-eibib - he waited and waited and waited until finally, when the monster's gaze was averted, he drilled Ga-gorib in the noggin and toppled him into his own corpse-filled chasm.  

The homeplate umpire then warned both dugouts.

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F is for Fafnir

Fafnir lived in the Germanic world of giants, dwarves, greed, and deceit.  Oh yeah, and of dragons.  When fan-fave Loki killed Fafnir's bro, Loki had to compensate the misdeed by filling the corpse with red gold (or something silly like that).  Alas, the treasure was cursed and caused all sorts of greed-fueled intrigue - eventually leading to Fafnir having to turn into a tremendous dragon to guard the gold.  Faffy was eventually slain by the hero Sigurd.

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E is for Echidna

I wasn't going to do Echidna at first since I have drawn plenty of snake-bodied weirdos in my career.  But upon a little more research I discovered she wasn't just any old snake-bodied weirdo - she was the mother of pretty much every freakish monster in Greek mythology - from the Hydra, to Cerberus to the Sphinx!  That's more than enough to get you a spot in my little alphabet project.

I find it amusing how genes and cross-species sex mean nothing in ancient myths.  Humanoid gods are always knocking boots with bulls and snakes and amalgamations and then giving birth to dragons and chimaeras and such.  Thank the sky that this isn't the case with modern human society - can you imagine the anxiety going in for that ultrasound?  Is it a boy?  Is it a girl?  No, it is a three headed dog that is destined to guard the gates to hell.  I mean, how do you decorate a nursery for that?

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D is for Dharmapalas

There are eight of these protectors of the Dharma (the Truth) in Buddhist lore - and, fortunately for me and having fun with this sketch, the Tibetan versions are particularly terrifying (even though they fight against evil).  

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C is for Cerberus

The three-headed dog that guarded the gates to Hades welcomed the freshly dead to enter, but any jerk that wanted to flee Hades and bop around ancient Greece once again would most likely be too horrified by Cerberus's howling or too horrified (and sickened) by the stench of its breath.  I can vouch for dog breath - it can be pretty damn putrid.  As with seemingly everything the Greeks could conceive, Heracles ended up besting it - most likely with the help of Cesar Millan.

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B is for Bachue

In South American mythology (specifically  Columbians), she is the Mother Goddess and the protector of crops.  Based on my very minimal research, I decided that this meant she was a nurturer of both humans and food plants.  The name Bachue, according to the book I have, means "large-breasted"  - that's about as obvious an invitation to draw some gratuitous skin as I will have on this project.

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Starting today, I'm going to get a little ambitious with my daily sketches in order to make up for some gaps in my frequency of posts.  My ambition will take the form of an alphabetical series of Mythological Figures .  Obviously, we start with A:

Anubis

The Jackal-headed  guardian of the Egyptian underworld has been portrayed countless times in fantasy art - mostly weak movies and video games.  There are actually a handful of "A" mythological figures that would have been fun to draw - but I've loved Anubis since I was a grade schooler (I did a report on Egypt once and I think I devoted half the report to Anubis!).  That said, I have a feeling Anubis might have had some early influence on my career path - so, I felt I should give him the seat of honor in kicking off my alphabet.  Before he and Thoth weigh my dead heart against the feather of truth,  maybe Anubis can take me on the scenic rout to the Hall of Judgement.

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I mustered up just enough energy for a cliche giant.  Cliche giants have terrible posture, crappy clothes, none-too-good hygiene, cows on their heads, and play with rocks.

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I have nothing to say about this.  Nothing at all.  I will instead, go to bed.

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Don't touch that.

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Tetanus from an unclean fork wasn't nearly as worrisome to Gil as the possibility of getting a case of West Nile.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 055

Micky was a trouble-seeker and when there was no trouble to be seeked, he made trouble.  You name it - racin' cars, shopliftin' cokes, smokin' in gym class, loitering at The Tar Pit, trampling cromags, cussing - he did it all.  One might say he was the most delinquent of the delinquents at Mastodon High.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 054

Just finished up my second to last big project.  Don't have much time for anything high-concept tonight so chew on this until I can get my brain gears back on track.

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This one is for Tim.  One of the toughs that lived in our neighborhood back in the day was named "Mitchell" - isn't that such a bully name?  I mean, MITCHELL for God's sake.  Given, it was his last name but still - his name wasn't Les Walbenstein or Harold Bortle - it was Chris Mitchell - and by those of us he terrorized, he was known simply as Mitchell.  Anyway, Tim and I likened him to a demon the likes of Tim Curry's character in the movie Legend.  And we further fantasized that he roared around our 'hood in a demonic roadster - bellowing threats to the physical well being of the younger kids, the less-tough, and, in my case, the ludicrously geeky.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 052

Still languishing in a sea of all-consuming and brain-frying work.  Alas, is that land I spy between the swells?  Whilst I slog through the remainder of my heavy-duty work, enjoy toadman as he skips the chocolate and graham cracker and goes right for the gooey marshmallow.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 051

I knocked one more thing off my list of harrowing deadlines and gorillas on my back.  To celebrate, I'm going to try to get back in Sketch-a-Day rhythm.  I'm RE-starting out slow with a little guy I call TOILETRON.  The small scented votive helps him fit less stinkily into society.

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Here's some Euro-hottie doodles.  Why?  Because I was just in Germany.  Why in Germany?  Signing Magic cards.  Do these accurately portray European hotties?  Not really - if I had to make a living accurately portraying anything, I would be king of the hobos. 

By the way, German accents - surprisingly sexy.

Bis morgen.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 049

So, as you may have noticed, my keeping-up with the daily sketch thing....well....I had to all but throw in the towel a little over a week ago.  I have such an enormous amount of work and it has been getting compacted as of late as I struggle to churn out a good product whilst staying true to the deadlines imposed.  As much fun as it is, the daily sketch was the only thing that I could cut back on in order to stave off insanity.  Also, I've been in Germany on a Magic:the Gathering mission for the last week - it should have been only six days except our plane had electrical problems half way across the Atlantic on the return trip and we had to turn around and fly back to Germany!  Good times - good times.

So anyway, my log jam of work is still going on but at least the Germany trip is out of the way and April 10th is my light at the end of the workload tunnel.  Expect sporadic Daily Sketch postings for the next two weeks or so and then hopefully I'll get back on track and do some major catch-ups.  So enjoy the handful of sketches (including the last two in my 80's movie series) I accomplished while learning to spreche wenig Deutsch and suffer through long, tedious days of travel.  

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 048

Conan had many conquests, but after so much blood and death, he set his sights on winning the Cimmerian Open and then wearing the crown of mens singles champion upon a troubled brow.  

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 047

Skynet, being a super-computer, rarely made a mistake - especially one based on a calculation and not one of those "underestimating the spirit of humans" kinds of mistakes that evil super-computers seem to always make.  No, this one was a simple decimal point error - and a T-800 was mistakingly sent to 64.3 millions years B.C..

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Before his cruel reign over the post apocalyptic outback and his unquenchable lust for fuel and strapping victims to the front of his mighty rig, Lord Humungous had humungous dreams and a humungous heart and loved nothing more than spending a sunny day catching trout out of farmer Gundry's pond.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 045

While the other Predators enjoyed collecting grisly trophies from their macho safaris in the far corners of the galaxy, LongTooth's collecting interests were vastly different - and frankly, made him a bit of an outcast in the Predator community.

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Not many people outside of Detroit know that before his career in law enforcement, Robocop's first gig was in mall security.  But 37 dead bodies later (all of which Robo said made "trouble" because they wouldn't "come quietly"), the cyborg police officer was sent to make bloody hamburger out of actual criminals instead of rowdy and unruly shoppers.

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With the Norwegian Research Outpost assimilated and all the sled dogs properly absorbed, The Thing had nothing better to do than take himself for a walk.

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I like the idea of weekly themes for the sketches.  I've decided that this week I'm going to visit some old movie pals that helped shape the geekball artist I am today.  

Today I showcase a xenomorph.  There are no more LV426 colonists to frighten or capture, the queen's a bitch, and the chestbursters, well, let's face it, they're really annoying.  So this frustrated drone has busted into a Weyland-Yutani liquor cabinet lookin' to drink away his blues.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 041

Can't muster much energy tonight - been painting all day.  Even with my occasional sketches where I can't dig up anything good, I have to say, this is pretty fun to do (sketch-a-day that is).  I owe my longevity to this point to my fellow sketch-bloggers.  Everyone is doing such fun and inspiring work - it is fuel for the sketching soul.  If I can get a breather after this current torrent of work (ending in April), I'll really hop on the fun-wagon with this!

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 040

Nobody and no THING could defeat Laximo Tremendicus in any arena in any sort of gladiator scenario.  The day he was pitted against a hurricane and came out victorious was eclipsed only weeks later when he drubbed into submission the entire continent of Africa - with a net and a blunt log.  Only when the Romans came up with the brilliant scheme of having Tremendicus fight himself did he finally succumb to defeat.  They say his corpse killed or mangled 753 men as they tried to bury his remains beyond the boundaries of the empire.

SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 039

 Xantareeka of the Klaazuun plains gazed on her people and wondered how she was replaced so quickly and throughly by this new god:  the ipod touch.  Perhaps a plague or possibly 100 days of raining blood down from the sky would return their souls to her.

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So the reason I haven't posted any of my daily sketches in about a week is that I have been down in Florida basking and beaching and watching my little daughter have a grand old time.  I would have posted about my upcoming mini-vacation on me ol' blogsite here, but I didn't want to advertise that I was out of town.  You see, I don't trust Glick or Fortune a speck and I have a feeling they would jump at the chance to bust into my vacated home and start defecating on all my stuff again.  I wouldn't mind if it didn't take so long to clean up but, well, you get the idea.

So anyway, Florida is where I was.  And sketching and me don't mix much when I'm on a trip of leisure - I just never get the hankering to do it - when I do try to do some drawing, my brain revolts and I fall asleep or get blotto on cheap margaritas.  So, I must admit, all but one of my catch-up sketches were done on the plane rides to and fro.  

Here are my last two - I had an inspiration lull with the blando alien dinosaur thing but was able to kick start again with a little bare boobage.   Scroll down to check out the other four.

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Florida has been fished into oblivion.  I seriously can't believe there is a fish left in the Gulf of Mexico.  Everyone down there fishes and everyone that goes there fishes.  One day a huge Tarpon-God will get some vengeance.

The other sketch is a stupid skull.