Beastrider

Sketch

Arthropod

Mash-up of various creepy crawlies. 

Werewolf Sketch

Sketch'agons

Wargs

I love wolves, and I love monstrous demon wolves. So Wargs are just fantastic. These creatures originate from the Norse mythological legends of Fenrisulfr, Hati and Skoll. The Norse and old English word for wolf is warg or vargr. They appear as well in Tolkein's Middle-Earth, and so though I have a great love for Smaug, I chose to redesign the Wargs for The Hobbit's Middle-Earth design contest. (John Howe already painted the perfect Smaug anyway). 

I prefer my Wargs hairier than the hyena-inspired creatures from the Lord of the Rings movies, and was inspired specifically by the old illustrations of  Dorothy Hardy and John Bauer.

Odin and Fenrir, (1909) by Dorothy Hardy

Tyr and Fenrir, (1911) by John Bauer

Prowling Wargs

The contest entry can be found here: http://www.thehobbitdesigncontest.com/entry/5773

Wargs and Spikey Things

Some critters and Warg concepts. First one is a creature for the Aerie, an omnivorous descendant of wyrms .

Autumnal Qilin

A Qilin/Kirin. Revamp of an old drawing, now with an environment background. I don't know where the idea of Kirin as fancy unicorn horned deer came from. In Chinese/Japanese myth and in ancient illustrations and statues they have antlers, and look more like cloven hooved dragons than anything. The more unicorn-like variations on the creature remind me more of another Chinese creature called the Sin-You. 

Anyway. Here's the process I used for this one.

Thumbnail drawing, for establishing composition, lighting and rough values.

Lowered the opacity and sketched the critter in more detail overtop.

First, painting underneath the sketch lines, I started painting things in more detail/figuring out what was going on. Tossing textures around. Then I painted overtop the critter sketch a tad.

Next, make a color overlay layer, for ya know colour. Then started painting over top that once satisfied.

Then detail detail, and finished.