This Monstrous Art #2, page 16 Jupiter Thunder Crash! This will raise all sorts of questions for anyone at all familiar with Greco-Roman mythology, and that’s kinda the idea. The first image on this page is one of my favorite pictures I’ve done for...

This Monstrous Art #2, page 16

Jupiter Thunder Crash!

This will raise all sorts of questions for anyone at all familiar with Greco-Roman mythology, and that’s kinda the idea.

The first image on this page is one of my favorite pictures I’ve done for TMA thus far. I’ve learned a lot about composition since finishing the book 2 drawings, and this is one of the few that still holds up to the new level of scrutiny I’m able to put them under, composition-wise.

This Monstrous Art #2, page 15 A goddess appears! Drawings of rocks! I had to build a model (sculpey over wire and tin foil) of the goddess’s head in order to get the antlers to look right in perspective. I’ve been dipping my toe into sculpture...

This Monstrous Art #2, page 15

A goddess appears! Drawings of rocks!

I had to build a model (sculpey over wire and tin foil) of the goddess’s head in order to get the antlers to look right in perspective. I’ve been dipping my toe into sculpture lately in order to create reference materials for my 2D work. It’s also been super helpful, as a sort of thought exercise, to think about things like the human head in a truly 3D medium. One of the things that has helped improve my art lately is the idea of thinking in 3D when working in 2D, and working in 3D really hammers that home. I recommend it to anyone working in 2D media: try sculpture.

I’ll probably post some pictures of my homemade maquettes on here at some point.

This Monstrous Art #2, page 14 More golem action! Speed lines! I don’t usually use effects like speed lines – generally, I tend to think composition and pose should suggest movement, and that should be enough. But in the case of that falling image on...

This Monstrous Art #2, page 14

More golem action! Speed lines!

I don’t usually use effects like speed lines – generally, I tend to think composition and pose should suggest movement, and that should be enough. But in the case of that falling image on the left, the line-y rendering I’d be doing anyway just lends itself to being used directionally; it’d almost be silly not to use that to my best advantage. I do want to say though, for any beginner artists who might be reading, that I see way too many people rely on special effects like speed lines; if there’s no energy in the composition, no amount of effects can zap it into life. And that goes double for digital effects that don’t fit with the general rendering style (e.g. difference-cloud-looking fog over a ink-style line drawing). Uh… end of rant.

This Monstrous Art #2, pages 12-13 Paintings! Golems! These are the first imaginative paintings I’ve ever done that have been in a full tonal range (i.e. not done with an animated or cell-shaded look)… These are done in acrylic on board, which is a...

This Monstrous Art #2, pages 12-13

Paintings! Golems!

These are the first imaginative paintings I’ve ever done that have been in a full tonal range (i.e. not done with an animated or cell-shaded look)… These are done in acrylic on board, which is a really different experience than my usual pen and paper work.

Since finishing these I’ve taken a class in oil painting, and let me tell you, friends: if you can stand the solvents and have somewhere with good ventilation to work in, oil paint is much nicer to work with than acrylic. I confess I had to tweak the colors on these a little bit in digital.  With acrylic, it’s really hard to know what your palette colors are going to look like on the painting, whereas with oil you can lay out your whole color scheme on your palette and every color is gonna look just like that in the final painting. It’s amazing. So subsequent color work you’ll see from me will be in oils, or possibly oils over an acrylic underpainting, which is a good way to work if ya don’t have time to let an oil underpainting dry and don’t wanna use cobalt drier, which has the scariest warning label I’ve ever seen. Heh.

This Monstrous Art #2, pages 10-11 Bathhouse courtyard! Weird ancient bathing customs! Sorry if these 2-page spreads are hard to read on the screen. The fact is, TMA was always meant to be a printed comic. And I will be printing books 1 and 2 soon,...

This Monstrous Art #2, pages 10-11

Bathhouse courtyard! Weird ancient bathing customs!

Sorry if these 2-page spreads are hard to read on the screen. The fact is, TMA was always meant to be a printed comic. And I will be printing books 1 and 2 soon, and then maybe looking into tabling at some New England area conventions. I need to make some more standalone pieces though if that’s gonna be a successful endeavor.

Wanted to get that allover-action feel of a Roman sarcophagus going again in this one, with Prisca and Aello in several different situations within the same composition, which is also something you see in ancient narrative art, like on Trajan’s column.

This scene was also somewhat inspired by this bathhouse exchange in the classic TV show I, Claudius:

Drusus: A man should keep himself clean, not have slaves do it.

Tiberius: And how’s he supposed to scrape his own back?

Drusus: He gets his brother to do it.

Tiberius: If he hasn’t got a brother?

Drusus: He gets his son.

Tiberius: If he hasn’t got a son?

Drusus: Gets his friend.

Tiberius: And if he hasn’t got a friend?

Drusus: Then he should go and hang himself.

Tiberius: I’ve tried it. Better to have a slave scrape your back.