Day 21. The Prompt Today Was Mesoamerican Mythology. I Ran Into A Problem With This One; Mainly, There

Day 21. The prompt today was Mesoamerican mythology. I ran into a problem with this one; mainly, there seems to be a huge gap in the scholarship about folkloric monsters in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures. Oh, sure, I found lots of gods and the like, but defining gods as monsters seems like dodgy territory to me. If anyone knows of non-divine supernatural creatures or spirits from those cultures, please send them my way, because now I have The Curiosity.

In light of not finding a huge amount of material to work from, I went with the idea that dogs, and specifically the Xoloitzcuintli dog, was believed to be a guide to the underworld. Now, psychopomps aren’t monsters strictly speaking, and the god associated with the dogs, Xolotl, isn’t a monster either, but there you go.

Dry media to mitigate page buckling.

Day 11. The prompt today was alien. This person is named Ned. Ned is an actor. Aliens can be actors, too. 

Brown paper, ink. 

Day 14. The prompt today was "living object". I made a golem. I don't have too much to say at the moment.

Day 18, drawn on the day and posted the next because I am feeling awful and I didn’t get it done before Stupid o’Clock. Today’s prompt was Inuit. This is a Greenland tupilaq. Here is the wiki article on it. 

I wanted to do this one kind of from the very beginning, partly because my sketchbook is full of stupid and angry looking little tupilaq characters designed to look more like the traditional carvings than a shamble of hair and bone and sinew. 

It’s all ink wash with some fountain pen. All of it. 

Day 22, and work continues to be awful. Alternative arrangements are in the making, but nothing's happening quickly enough for it to be better. I might sell prints. This is a possibility.

The prompt today was Urban Legend. I did a mysterious white stag from the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. It apparently guides lost travelers and warns people of disasters. Again, not strictly a monster, but I feel like there's enough monstrosity going on at the moment, and a white deer that helps to prevent disaster would be awfully nice.

Wiki link to deer legend

So I got to see a super cool friend of mine this weekend, whom I haven't seen since 2008, and while I'm really happy about that, I am currently full of all kinds of conflicted emotion.

I haven't the money to go back and visit England, because I am poor, and the visit that was going to happen has been cancelled for reasons. My intention to spend Bonfire Night with friends just doesn't look like it's going to happen, and that is crushing inside. 

Basically, nearly all of my friends live far enough away that getting to them is impossible for me at the moment. I suppose it just burns all the worse when you get to be near one of those friends and then distance happens again. 

I am thankful for the friends that live here, but it still feels very isolated. 

In short: