Creatures are always fun to work on. I really like doing fantasy art, which is hard to get a chance to work with in real life! So it’s always fun to work on during my spare time. These are a couple from around 4 years ago, which evolved into a screen printing project based on a book by Peter S. Beagle and favorite 80’s cartoon, The Last Unicorn. The prints are first, followed by some original sketches (some of which never made it to printing, but I liked none-the-less). The prints are a two-color screen print onto Canson paper.
According to the story, all the creatures on display in the midnight carnivale were actually regular animals with an enchantment on them.
The boa print got smudged because my screen was still wet, but I kinda like it anyway.
So in the story, the captive unicorn observes that the dragon is actually just a simple crocodile.
In one of my favorite parts of the story, a visitor interjects with a question wondering how could the Midgard serpent fit into a cage if his body encircled the world? Ruhk, the guide through the midnight carnivale, quickly ad libs that a loop of the serpert popped through a different dimension or something, and conveniently into the cage it is displayed in. Nice save! DEFINITELY ironclad. Lucky for him, he was talking to a bunch of peasants.
This is a first-pass, unfinished sketch of Cerberus, the dog that guarded the Underworld in Greek mythology. He never made it into the project, but I still kinda like him.
The midnight carnival was owned by a witch named Mommy Fortuna...and she always had a crow flapping around her or sitting on the tree trunk she wore on her head (at least in the cartoon she did). This was a sketch for the first of the prints, which displayed the carnival's motto: Creatures of night brought to light!
Courtney Trowbridge 