"The Bog-Jabberwocky" Monster of the Month for April! (Patreon)

Welcome to April! I am a little late getting started this month because, as is customary, Annie and I caught the con crud in Kansas City last week and have been sick ever since.  (For anyone wondering, the answer is no, as a parent of twins you don't get sick days off haha)  Anyway, it's been a slower start to the month, so I hope you will bear with me as we finally get ourselves back into fighting shape. 

To start the month off I have a new monster for you! "The Bog-Jabberwocky." Drawn on Smooth Bristol with my new favorite pencil, the Staedtler 0.5mm 925 mechanical.  

Q: "Hey Justin, why the 'Bog' prefix? Are you trying to be cute? What, are you too cooool for a classic Jabberwocky?"  

A: First of all, watch the attitude. I'm a really big deal. And second, no, I'm not too cool for a classic Jabberwocky, in fact he is one of my favorite monsters of all time.  And one day I plan to truly capture him in his fully majestic horror in a full scene illustration dedicated to Lewis Carroll's lovely little poem.  

But for the Monster of the Month series I want to avoid using exact characters where I can. Firstly, so I can have more artistic freedom with the designs, but secondly, because I like to use classic fantasy monsters as archetypes so that there could be a wide variety of a single type of monster.  For this monster, I want it to be like the term "Jabberwocky" is a general term, like the genus of the beast if we were using taxonomic terms. And the "Bog" prefix denotes the species of the beast.  This is a Jabberywocky that live and hunts in the boggy swamps (perhaps preying on hapless Bog-Hoggles?) and so we call it a bog-Jabberwocky. In the same way that Panthera describes a large predatory jungle cat, but Panthera tigris specifically describes a tiger. (I screwed this up by not actually working that phrasing into his latin title in the image, but I couldn't help but add a little reference to the Carroll poem there.)

I hope you like him! I am already at work on the color version today and am really enjoying this one. 

Announcement: If you've been interested in the Mentorship series but haven't seen any openings, we finally have some spots available! However, tomorrow is the last day for sign-ups, so if you are interested please sign up today!