Dreep
In which I design a sheep-like creature for the half-orc Druid to cuddle in our Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Floating Logos
While Poems of the Night Watch is paying the bills, Tales from the Floating Vagabond is paying the karma forward, as it were. A dear friend introduced me to this wacky, obscure, off-the-wall roleplaying game in college, and to my utter delight, I met the game’s creator several years later and we too became friends. […]
Was I on a Riker Kick?
Whenever I don’t know what to draw, this is where I start – with a creature. I didn’t realize until I drew this that it must be a distant cousin of last week’s monster. I’ve watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation during the pandemic, so maybe all those scenes of Riker’s beard […]
The Beard Has Gone Too Far
The real world can be pretty weird and fantastic sometimes, but I think the common thread uniting all of geekdom is the desire to make it even weirder and more fantastic. As long as I can remember, I’ve found reality somewhat lacking in mystery and panache, so I’ve made my own. That’s how an elderly […]
Snoutree Rat
Most of my creatures start with some basis in the real world, usually obvious in their construction. However, I don’t really set out on these sketches thinking “I’mma draw a rat crossed with a Christmas tree.” I just start with one part of the animal, usually the head, and see what happens. Some days, I […]
Moufeaux
I have nothing insightful to say this week. Ten people got murdered at a grocery store near me. I’ve shopped at that store. My friends shop at that store. Nothing is sacred, nothing is safe, so here are some moufeaux waiting for the end of the world.
Masked Ghost
My partner has spent a lot of the pandemic coming up with an epic new Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I’ve spent a lot of the pandemic watching Star Trek and sketching on the couch. Sometimes he incorporates what I draw into his game world, and sometimes I draw the things from his game world to […]
Save it for a Rainy Day
Back when I was working on Castle Whatsitsname, I knew I wanted sentient gargoyles for the castle’s security system. I never got far enough in the story to actually introduce them, but I’m saving them up and one day I will.
Carcassones
I hadn’t heard of either the game or the city when I was 16 and my art teacher let the class use the classroom lockers as a canvas. I painted these swallow-tailed silhouettes above a roiling ocean scene and named them carcassones. I mean, what else was I going to paint, plain old birds?
Griffin, Griffon, or Gryphon?
I first saw it spelled “griffin,” but if you learned about this mythical creature from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, you probably called it a “gryphon.” I’ve seen other spellings over the years, and I figured when griffins get drunk they go on rants about how even they don’t know how to spell their name properly […]