I think the name speaks for itself.

Another break time sketch. It occurred to me that most giant monsters (Godzilla, Rodan, the Ymir, Dragons) were some sort of reptile. The mammal giants were apes (King Kong, Konga, and then more King Kong). So this guy is a mammal of some type. Hard to say what species he’s related to. I was thinking of hyena when I was drawing him but he doesn’t really resemble any mammal I can think of.

Another recent sketch. Done during a break at the day job.

A couple of years ago, when Nizzibet and I were still sharing a house with Jason, and we still saw Emily and Marnie on a regular basis, we had the occasional meal together. On this occasion we started joking about what sorts of animals we were. We didn’t self identify, we picked out the animals that the other people were and then invented a combination. It was one of those you-had-to-be-there moments. I no longer remember which of us was supposed to be which animal combination. I do remember that Marnie didn’t care for the combination we’d chosen for her.

A month or so later I sketched out the animals with the intention of doing finished illustrations and giving them to Nizzie, Jasson, Emily and Marnie. But I never got around to finishing them. So here is the first of four.

Usually if I’m going to put a background on a drawing I have the background at least sketched out in the original piece. In the case of the Mutant Bug here I hadn’t even planned to color it when I drew it. I had no background in mind. But a background seems necessary for it to feel finished. The background here was done with Photoshop watercolor brushes and then run through a blur filter.

Next add color to the not so green areas of our Mutant Bug; in this case, the mouth and claws. Give the eyes reflective highlights while we’re at it.

Next I duplicate both the original color layer and the shadow layer, setting both to multiply. On the new color layer I erase out areas I want to have highlights. I use a filter blur on the new shadow layer so that the shadows don’t have such stark lines to them.