Jabrosky's Crimes Against Fantasy Art

[Jabrosky]

Pharaoh's Shame
I think this Pharaoh looks ashamed, or perhaps shy or nervous about something. That's supposed to be her crown that she's holding in her hands.

I drew this with graphite pencils on 18 x 24 inch paper, which is much larger than the scanner-sized sketchbook paper I use most of the time. The whole process must have taken over two hours, and I still think it could use cleaning up in places. I want to see if a local art gallery or seller will accept the hard copy since I could use the income right now.

 

[Jabrosky]

Notecard Hatshepsut
Someone on DeviantArt was telling me about these special art trading cards (called ATC or ACEO) which are 2.5 x 3.5-inch cards which you draw on and sell. When I first heard about the concept, I was skeptical that I could squeeze in half-decent art in such a small size, but nonetheless I decided to practice this kind of small-scale drawing on an old notecard. At 3 x 5 inches in dimension, this notecard is larger than the ATCs described to me, but I was pleasantly surprised at how this turned out despite the tiny canvas.

Anyway, this is of course Hatshepsut, the most famous of ancient Egypt's small number of female rulers.

 

[Jabrosky]

Jungle Surfing
Acheroraptor temertyorum, the American cousin of Velociraptor, surfs the mossy tree boughs of the jungle canopy. It even has outstretched its wings for greater balance, much like a human surfer.

As to why the raptor doesn't get splinters in his feet from sliding on those branches, maybe he has tough scales on his soles for protection.

 

[Jabrosky]

Egyptian Elephants on the March
Egyptian war elephants equipped with bladed tusk-guards march across a grassy plain somewhere near the Nile River.

I drew this 18 x 24 piece over the course of a few days. In retrospect I think I made the elephants a bit too big relative to their Egyptian drivers, but it is a fantasy piece nonetheless.

 

[Jabrosky]

Digitally colorized version of my earlier Pharaoh's Shame/Burden drawing.

 

[Jabrosky]

Modern Nefertiti
Queen Nefertiti, as she might look if she and her classical Egyptian culture were still around in modern times.

When I first set out to illustrate my concept of modernized Egyptians, I started with fashion inspired by hip-hop culture (mixed with native Egyptian elements of course) in mind. I changed my mind after remembering a conversation with a fellow artist who was designing modern-style African clothing for some 3D program. Ergo, I ended up with an outfit that looked more fashion model-like than hip-hop. Maybe that's a more dignified look for a rich and powerful Queen.

The color palette for her clothing was a bit of a challenge. I wanted something recognizably Egyptian, yet at the same time more colorful than historical Egyptian linen garb. As for the face paint, I figured that if the Egyptians in this alternate timeline weren't affected by the Greco-Roman and Islamic conquests among others, they'd look the other way and absorb sub-Saharan influences instead.

 

[Jabrosky]

Megalodon the Tyrant Shark King
My vision of Carcharodon (or is it Carcharocles?) megalodon, the great tyrant shark of the Miocene ocean. I don't care so much for the standard portrayal of this animal as resembling a scaled-up great white or mako shark, so I opted for more exotic-looking influences like the tiger, leopard, or whale shark.

If you're wondering what the scars around his head are, they're supposed to come from conflict with colossal squids. Megalodon is usually reconstructed as a whale-eater, but I bet something his scale would have appreciated a little calamari on the side too.

As an ironic joke, I played the Disney song Under the Sea on iTunes while coloring this. Because no theme suits Megalodon like one about how fun life is in the dark depths of the ocean.

 

[Jabrosky]

Unwavering Loyalty
Trained from a young age in the fighting arts and espionage, this elite Egyptian warrior has sworn on her life to serve her Pharaoh against his enemies. Here she is presenting the head of a hapless Canaanite troublemaker who needed pacification.

I wanted this chick to have a sinister assassin-like look, so I gave her outfit a reddish palette since red was the color of chaos in Egyptian culture. Some influences behind her basic concept include the Medjay warriors in Kandake Brockington's Journey Through Darkness books and the historical female warriors of Dahomey (now modern Benin).

 

[Jabrosky]

Ketabu the Sunbeam Warrior
From a young age, Ketabu has trained in the fighting and espionage arts to serve her father, King Djekahi of Akhiptu, as one of his elite Sunbeam warriors. She has sworn an oath of unwavering loyalty to the throne's cause, but when he assigns her a mission that goes against her conscience, she finds herself pitted against the very regime that raised her up.

The shading style used here is supposed to resemble the preliminary pencil work used by comic-book artists before the digital coloring process.

 

[Jabrosky]

Seductress with a Secret
Ketabu, my Egyptian-style assassin, may have studied the fighting arts from a young age, but her espionage training also covered taking advantage of her feminine wiles. Here she's using them to full effect one sultry night, but she is hiding something behind her back that may not be so pleasant.

 

[Jabrosky]

Anansi and Serket Portraits
Portraits of two arachnid divinities from African mythology, Anansi the spider and Serket the scorpion. I settled on a more human appearance for these deities' faces because spider and scorpion anatomy are frankly not my favorite subjects to look up. Spiders, along with dogs and giant squid, creep the heck out of me.

My design for these two deities may look sinister, but while Anansi has always been the archetypical trickster, both he and Serket also have some beneficial roles in their respective traditions. Serket functions as a protector deity whereas Anansi is credited with teaching agriculture to humankind.

 

[Jabrosky]

Egyptian vs Hyenas WIP
Work-in-progress sketch of an Egyptian female warrior confronting hungry hyenas out in the Nile Valley savanna. If I don't get the whole thing finished tonight, I'll have it up within the next couple of days.

See if you can recognize these hyenas' designs. You might have an advantage if you were a kid watching animated movies in the 1990s...

 

[Jabrosky]

Egyptian vs Hyenas
An Egyptian huntress has a nasty run-in with some predatory hyenas out in the savannas of the Nile Valley. She's going to need a new spear after this encounter, as spotted hyenas have some of the most powerful jaws of all the carnivorous land mammals.

 

[Jabrosky]

Graphite facial portrait of my heroine Ketabu, an Egyptian-style warrior princess. I think she came out looking nervous or guilty here.

 

[Jabrosky]

Ketabu the Warrior Princess (Update)
I've shaded her skin in and given her a small backdrop of savanna grass. Her story has undergone some major revisions in the planning process, but at last I've finally gotten around to actually writing it.

 

[Jabrosky]

Dress as the Greeks Dress
This Egyptian princess is ready to visit Greece on a diplomatic errand, so she has mixed her native costume with Greek fashion items to better fit into the local environs. Mixing together different cultural influences can lead to especially creative designs in my personal opinion, but I wonder if this would count as an act cultural appropriation?

 

[Jabrosky]

An Unlikely Pair
Imagine the surprise this Tyrannosaurus rex must feel when a fearless butterfly has settled on his snout. He probably won't eat it though, since butterflies that vibrantly colored are generally poisonous.

In case you're wondering, the butterfly is a made-up species.

 

[Jabrosky]

Not Your Average Princess
Ketabu, my warrior princess, leaps into battle with her spear. From a young age she received training in the martial arts, which has sculpted her into one of the most formidable warriors in the whole kingdom. She also enjoys hunting in the savannas beyond her palace as a pastime. She is not your stereotypical Disney-style princess at all!

 

[Jabrosky]

Mosileon the Rebel War Hero
Mosileon is a seasoned old warrior from the island oligarchy of Parthenos. His distinguished military career has won him a special level of influence within the Parthenan high council, but he staunchly opposes their vassalage to the mighty empire of Akhiptu across the sea. When the Akhiptan King Djekahi's son dies in an ambush, the King blames Mosileon and his supporters for setting up the incident as a terrorist attack. He sends his vengeful daughter Ketabu after Mosileon's head, but she finds there may be more to the story than it appears...

If the Akhiptans in my story are based off the ancient Egyptians, Mosileon's homeland of Parthenos is modeled after the Greek city-state of Athens. In fact the name of Mosileon's political faction, the Owls, draws from the goddess Athena's symbolic bird.

Mosileon may look like a lighter-skinned African-American dude in this drawing, but his Parthenan people are supposed to be moderately brown-skinned with curly hair. Their physical features could be described as "mulatto" or intermediate between those of the black Akhiptans and paler peoples to the north.

 

[Jabrosky]

Ketabu the Lethal Beauty
Another view of Ketabu, the warrior princess of Akhiptu. I'm plugging through her story's first chapter as I type this, and it has her confront the loss of a loved one and the mysterious foreigners who killed him. Vengeance will feature as one of the themes in the story since it's one of her major motivators.

Ketabu's kilt may obscure it here, but I wanted her to have a shapely derriere underneath it. That actually does affect how other characters react to her, especially the non-Akhiptans who have this stereotype of Akhiptan women as having generous backsides. It should be needless to say that Ketabu takes virulent offense to this objectifying treatment.