Fantastic Bestiary - Part 2

I started this post back in March over the holiday weekend. While working on drawings for Black Star 1.8 I decided to warm up by dipping my toes back into Ash and Ana's mythical world.

What started as a warm up turned into a fun afternoon of drawing and writing and I LOVE what it turned out. The first page of the bestiary that I typeset was just to try out the fonts. So, I made some tweaks to the style and format. For example, Ash is a lefty, so his annotations are slightly skewed as, without ruled paper, he finds it difficult to keep text in line. I've gone back and updated the first page.

I think I do some of my best work when I don't give myself an 'assignment' and just draw whatever strikes my fancy. I'm a firm believer that great art is 10% inspiration 10% talent and 80% technique and discipline. Recently I've burned myself out on the discipline and haven't left enough room for inspiration and enjoyment!

Looking through my sketch book and notes I've actually written and drawn over a dozen entries for the bestiary (There are trows decorating the margins of just about every notebook I own). But, I never got around to setting them because, at the time, they weren't my focus. Seeing how well the gargoyles page turned out, my instinct is to construct a regimen of typsetting the entries and set an end date for delivery. But, the rest of me thinks... just do it when the mood strikes. There's no magic formula for success and pressuring myself to do it is only going to send me back into a spiral of frustration. There will be time for dilligence later.

If you're curious, here are some of the other fun creatures that you'll encounter in Merlin's bestiary.

Check out more from the Bestiary here!

• Eachy
• Giants giants giants
• Cat sidhe
• Chimaera
• Kelpie
• Dragons, sidhe (fairies), and trows

Hope you enjoy!
‽

Buy 'Black Star' or 'Spirit Shear' on Amazon in the UK and US
Check out Themo on Twitter and Facebook