Another sketch from the 2002 section of the sketchbook. Apparently this gentleman is summoning up something unpleasent. Whether the unpleasentness will be turned outward or reflected back I couldn’t say.
Burrabb Shepherd
I’ve imagined that the burrabb were a more generally carnivorous species that humans but I’d have to do some research before I committed to the idea. The more specialized the diet the less adaptable the species. Human civilization grew out of agriculture. The burrabb might have developed agriculture in order to feed their food animals rather than as a way to feed themselves. With the farm comes the town. With the town comes space travel. I’m probably hopping over a couple of steps here but you get the idea. A space faring culture is less likely to arise from a nomadic herding culture than an agrarian/industrial one.
Burrabb Marketplace
The burrabb have a social structure similiar to a lion pride – an individual of one sex is catered to by mulitple mates of the other sex. The first human analogy would seem to be societies where men have more than one wife. This would be a superficial analogy. In those societies the male sex has most of the public role and interacts with other males in running society. In a lion’s pride the women do most of the work. A lion’s pride is the society to the lions. Another pride in the same territory will result in a fight.
The burrabb have a society of “prides”. The smaller sex does most of the work. The smaller sex does most of the negotiation. Among some burrabb races and cultures members of the large sex are able to sit next to each other and have pleasant conversations. These cultures are the exceptions. In general, the larger burrabb sex finds it physically uncomfortable to be close to other members of its sex. Too much closeness will often lead to violence.
It
I have a fondness for swamp monsters – Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, the Glob, the Heap – things that walk like men but are now composed of plants and fungus rather than of flesh. They aren’t zombies exactly. They aren’t really alive, not like an animal is. This creature is my own unnamed take on the subject. It appears in some of my old sketchbooks, the ones old enough that I cringe when I look at the sketches in them. It was once a man. The man died (or perhaps was murdered) and his body sank into the swamp. His hatred lived. It lived to form a new body and to drive that mossy, slimy form to seek revenge on those who had wronged the man in life. Sometimes the monster was destroyed. Sometimes it killed all those the man had hated and, no longer having purpose, became still, grew roots and became one with the bog.
Prayers to Unknown Gods
Another case of me getting out of the way of the drawing. I don’t know what this is, what it is praying to or whether it’s actually praying. The image came to mind and I let my hands go to work.
The finished version can be found in my Epilogue gallery.
Great Hats!
You may have noticed that the future doesn’t look like anyone predicted. We’ve got an internet but no flying cars. Fashion looks like it always did except when it doesn’t. Take a snapshot of any culture and all you’ll get is a snapshot. It’s unlikely that you’ll know why the people in the picture are wearing those. You’ll only be able to guess at what they are discussing. The older I get the more I’m comfortable with not knowing, the more I’m okay with having an incomplete picture. I still love filling in the pieces, discovering what’s beyond the next bend, but the universe is vast and I am not.
Which is a long winded way of saying that even though I drew this sketch I can’t really tell you what’s going on with in it.
Ghost Pirates – After
This version of the Ghost Pirates was inked and toned all in Photoshop. If I remember correctly the reason Epilogue.net rejected it was because it was too blurry. Since the point of the image was to approximate the pirates walking out of the fog my first reaction was, “Duh! It’s supposed to be blurry!” It’s years later now. My reaction to getting rejected at Epilogue these days is usually just to shrug.
The Ghost Pirates – Before
This sketch was inspired by William Hope Hodgson‘s The Ghost Pirates. Hodgson is one of those frustrating authors who has great ideas but is hard to recommend to anyone because he’s not a lot of fun to read. His best work is in short stories. The longer the story the more needlessly dense and repetitive the prose. If you’ve seen Attack of the Mushroom People you’ve seen an adaptation of one of Hodgson’s best short stories The Voice in the Night.
I finished a version of this in Photoshop that was then rejected by Epilogue.net. I’ll post that tomorrow.
Ghost Pirates – Even More Before
I found this earlier version of the Ghost Pirates while I was looking for the completed version. I don’t see any reason to hang onto it so I’m posting it today.
Crinoids
We resume our journey through the 2002 section of the sketchbook.
In the Sentient 39 “universe”, there are 71 sentients. This is according to the Blair, a species of space faring invertebrate that also claims to one of the oldest of said sentients. I haven’t actually figured out who all those sentients are. (A sentient, at least in Blairish terms, designates the life that has evolved on a specific planet. If that life then went into space and seeded 49 other planets and an intelligent lifeform evolved on all those planets the Blair would still say it was one sentient. No one has been able to get a good explanation from them as to why that is.)
I’ve adopted H.P. Lovecraft’s alien races as sentients. They are public domain creatures. But really, I find them fascinating. Lovecraft invented aliens that were weird and strange and not human. No bumpy foreheaded humans for him. This unfinished sketch is my attempt at showing what an active crinoid culture would look like.
