Last month I asked for good reviews for #AllTomorrows on Amazon, Amazon UK, and Waterstones - and everyone who sent me back a screenshot of their review...
Unbeknownst to many cryptozoology enthusiasts, Turkey's Lake Van is home to a native cryptid, a horse-and-dinosaur-like monster known as the "Lake Van Monster", or "Cano".
Perhaps inspired by the Pegasoferae hypothesis, which groups odd-toed ungulates, carnivorans, and bats in a single clade, generous patron M. D. commissioned me to draw giant flightless bats used as beasts of burden in his speculative universe.
We began our efforts with a series of sketches for goat, donkey, or packhorse-sized flightless bats.
If you want to be good as a surreal artist, you have to wrap your mind around real things first. Figure drawing is a wonderful way to acquaint yourself with reality.
Sometimes I sketch friends and acquaintances who pose for me.
Most other times, I make very quick "snapshot" doodles while...
A whimsical portrait of a patron as a pre-colonial post-human from the #AllTomorrows universe. Arms and legs get blocky and flatten - and fit together with others like an M. C. Escher pattern.
Once again, generous donor J.M. asked me to create a commission from Robert Reed's "Great Ship" universe - this time the low-energy ecosystem inhabited by the "Luckies" - a genus of tiny hive intelligences.
...“A single Lucky is only this big. The size of a dust mite, in essence. Autochemotrophic metabolisms. Low energy, minimal complexity. Not only aren’t they particularl...
Created for generous patron T. T., a character that evolved into "...a particularly aggressive carpet, after an incredibly long passage of time and a series of unfortunate events."
This was the ancestor of the commissioned creature. Like all my commissions, this one started out with a batch of simple sketches, all depicting a flattened pseudo-arthropod evolved from a humanoid crea...
Some of the largest freshwater (above), and marine (below), arthrognaths from the upcoming Snaiad re-release. Arthrognaths are a phylum of fish-equivalents on Snaiad, characterised by quasi-exoskeletal forelegs evolved into jaw-like structures, and eight (sometimes less) sets of fleshy, lobe-like fins.
Here is the sketch study for the head of the large "blockhead" arthrognath seen above.
Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere is an incredible speculative evolution project that really needs more attention. I have really been enjoying Kaimere and its creatures for a while, so I decided to create fan-art for this universe.
I got in touch with Keenan for a species to illustrate. He sent me the Ba'khar, a...
Once again, generous patron J. M. commissioned me to illustrate an alien from Robert Reed's "Great Ship" universe. Here is how the "Phoenix" race was described:
They evolved on a small hot world. Gills augmented a trio of large, black-blooded lungs; their metabolisms were quick and fierce. Where most winged aliens were gliders or soarers, passive and efficient, the P...
Nearly every day I put in extra work to Snaiad. It's taking time, but it will be worth it. Here's a preliminary layout featuring two "Elythrakephalid" herbivores with (independently-evolved) flamboyant display structures.
Thank you all for your support of Snaiad! When it comes out as a book, it will feature the names of my life-time Patreon donors in print in a special thank-you chapter...