The Scavenging Run

Just a bit of a preview of an image I'm inking for Airakar as a patron sketch that was for November.  I'm a bit late in getting this done due to varied life commitments, so I thank them for both their patience and for allowing me to to share a version of the sketch here for folks!

The image features N'roya, a half-cheetah/half-succubus character who lives in a post apocalyptic setting that I found pretty fascinating.  I've always liked the older decayed places of societies, memories of society rusting and scattered around, so I liked the idea a lot, and ended up having to stop myself from just adding more and more to the ruined building in the background.

The character intrigued me quite a bit too.  Maybe its a slight bias to characters that have a bit of a 'twist' to them.  In this case a character with demonic (or is it infernal?) blood in them.  Plus all the details and spots fed my OCD nature very nicely ;)

The monstrosity in the background is a sack-cloth scarecrow.  As I understand it, a creature sewn together with magic and ritual, corpses of man and beast alike in twisted, horrid form.  I took a little bit of inspiration from The Thing as well as the monster from The Ritual (I damn near just made the antlers twisted from limbs, but thought that was a bit on the nose and a bit too much of a 'nod' to that design).  If anything, it'll make this scavenging run an interesting one.

This marks the first cheetah I've ever drawn as well.. I think.  To be honest I'm crap at remembering what species I've drawn before or not, but I think its the first cheetah.  Many spots!

I've been given kind permission to share a 150dpi version of the final inked piece here when it's finished.  Hopefully that will be in short order around all the holiday blitzing around I'm doing (Please, no more snow.  We're good on snow now).  Depending on timing the next patron sketch might have to be pushed back to the first or second of the new year, chiefly due to the holiday week being busy for many people in some way or another.  I'll have to see how productivity goes though!

May there be jingling and hooves for all.

-T.J.