Jabrosky's Crimes Against Fantasy Art

[Jabrosky]

Poached for Horns
This Triceratops has lost both its horns and life to humanity's greed. If humans ever figure out how to contact prehistoric life, it would not surprise me if someone started an illegal trade in ceratopsian horns.

 

[Jabrosky]

Auset Spreads Her Wings
My vision of Auset, the Egyptian goddess better known as Isis, is about to spread her divine wings.

If you look closely, you may notice that her primary feathers are sprouting from her index fingers. This is taking a cue from certain feathered dinosaurs which had their primary feathers attached to their hands' second digits. Also, the waviness of the dreadlocks I've given her reminds me vaguely of Gabrielle Union.

 

[Jabrosky]

Leaping into Battle (Work-in-Progress, Stage One)

So this is going to be my next major self-imposed project over the next few days (I started it last night). It's planned to portray an Egyptian warrior queen leaping into battle against some Middle Eastern soldiers.

I'm drawing this on 18 x 24-inch paper, so it may be difficult to get the whole drawing in one photo using my iPhone (right now you're only seeing part of it).

 

[Jabrosky]

Leaping into Battle (Work-in-Progress, Stage Two)
Update on my drawing of an Egyptian warrior queen attacking some Middle Eastern soldiers. I should be about 2/3 of the way through the process now. I just need to add some shading and render in the characters' skin tones.

 

[Jabrosky]

Leaping into Battle (finished at last!)
An Egyptian warrior queen leaps into battle against some Middle Eastern soldiers in the desert. Hopefully her agility, lightning reflexes, and martial arts skills can aid her against this mass of enemies!

Mom taught me a way to scan this whole 18-24” drawing in. The key is to scan in different areas of the drawing and then stitch them together using Photoshop’s Photomerge tool. The results are wondrous!

 

[Jabrosky]

Final update for "Leaping into Battle", which has color now:

 

[Jabrosky]

Back from War
The Pharaoh has returned home from one of her military campaigns safe and sound, but her hair has really grown out underneath that war crown. She might be overdue for a haircut, unless of course she wants to be stylish and rock her new 'fro.

Just wanted to doodle another chick with an Afro.

 

[Jabrosky]

Dinosaur Whistle
Something I came up with while brainstorming for a short story...

What if you had an instrument that worked like a dog whistle, except you used it against dinosaurs? It would produce a blast of very low-frequency (or infrasonic) sound that a human couldn't hear, but it would sound painfully loud to a large dinosaur.

This "dinosaur whistle" is supposed to be carved from horn, though it does owe some inspiration to elephant tusks with designs carved into them by African artisans.

 

[Jabrosky]

Bwanga Flashes Her Knife

What you hold in your hand is not a knife. What Bwanga here is flashing out before your eyes...that's a knife.

I was actually reluctant to finish and upload this picture because it's not the most unique image of an African jungle huntress standing with her knife and spear. Nonetheless I needed to end my artistic block sometime, and I actually do have bigger plans for this character. Of course she fights dinosaurs and other prehistoric monsters, but her story also pits her against someone far crueler and more intelligent than any jungle beast...and she doesn't even recognize it at first.

Sorry if her left leg looks too wobbly. I think I exaggerated her shin's inward curve too much.

 

[Jabrosky]

Run Away and Never Return
This Egyptian princess, burdened by crushing shame, glances one last time at her kingdom before she flees into the desert.

In retrospect the sunset should probably be behind the pyramids here since they lie to the west of the Nile Valley.

 

[Jabrosky]

Bwanga and the Tyrant
Bwanga, huntress of the Mayombi rainforest, swings in to confront a Tyrannosaurus rex. Because nothing is more awesome than an African jungle girl pitted against my favorite dinosaur of all time.

Lines drawn on 11x14'' paper. That allows more room for detail than the standard 8.5x11'', and yet it's not quite as cumbersome as, say, an 18x24''.

 

[Jabrosky]

Nefertiti's Steed
The Egyptian Queen Nefertiti is spending some quality time with a zebra from her stables. Originally I wanted to draw a whole zebra chariot, but I was feeling tired and so settled on this. Maybe I'll tackle the zebra chariot this weekend when I have more energy.

 

[Jabrosky]

Goddess of War
Ever wondered what Kratos from the God of War games would look like if he came from Egypt rather than Greece? Of course, given that the real Egyptian divinity of war (Sekhmet) was a woman, I think the Egyptian equivalent to Kratos would be female too. However, since Kratos is portrayed as having alabaster-pale skin in the games, I went the opposite route with my redesign and made her jet-black.

I have both the first and second God of War games on one disc at home, but I'm currently stuck on one of the early boss fights with the Hydra in the first game. Nonetheless, that chained knife Kratos has is very fun to throw around.

 

[Jabrosky]

A Cold Afterlife
What if the ancient Egyptian civilization managed to reach modern times and develop cryonic technology? Instead of mummifying their dead, the Egyptians would deep-freeze them!

Also, this is one of the first times I've ever drawn a person with their eyes shut. If you haven't had experience with it before, it's not as easy to get it looking right as you might think.

 

[Jabrosky]

Fiddling with the 'Fro
Late-night doodle of an Egyptian chick fiddling with her hair out of boredom. At least she was supposed to look bored. I can't help but think from the way I posed the arm that she's questioning someone's mental health.

 

[Jabrosky]

Ocean Goddess
A spirit of the tropical ocean hangs out with two of her subjects, a plesiosaur (that's the long-necked reptile with the long teeth) and a coelacanth fish. She kinda reminds me of the ocean divinity Yemaja from West African Yoruba mythology.

Modern Hatshepsut
Another doodle prompted by asking myself the question, "What if the ancient Egyptian civilization survived to the present day?" This is supposed to be a modern-style vision of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, or at least how she might look in a more casual outfit. Most probably she would put on something fancier and more elaborate in a more formal context.

 

[Jabrosky]

Diabloceratops Among the Heavens
A Diabloceratops eatoni enjoys its high vantage among some cloud-shrouded mountains. This ceratopsian dinosaur's genus name means "devil horn-face", so it appealed to my sense of irony to place it in a more "heavenly" environment. As for the mountains in the background, their verdant and exotic appearance is loosely based on certain mountain ranges in southern China.

 

[Jabrosky]

Hebraic Beauty
I wanted to add some racial diversity to the female characters in my art, so here's a young maiden from Biblical Israel. Actually she was Indian when I initially conceived of her, but as the drawing progressed, she came to remind me of Moses's mother Jochebed from the movie Prince of Egypt. I suppose she could pass as a woman from almost any part of the Middle East.

 

[Jabrosky]

Proud of Her Service
I would best describe the emotion this Egyptian warrior chick is expressing as pride or maybe haughtiness. I personally am most proud of her shield's design.

If you're wondering about the ultra-narrow waist and other exaggerated proportions of her anatomy, they were inspired by a certain little girls' cartoon called "Winx Club". Not that I have ever seen the show or have any actual interest in it, but sometimes I wonder what my characters would look like in different artistic styles.

 

[Jabrosky]

Golden Bristles
So this is Kulindadromeus zaibaikalicus, the recently discovered ornithischian dinosaur from Jurassic Siberia that allegedly had feathers. If you've seen the spate of articles claiming that all dinosaurs had feathers, they're basing their conclusions off this find.

Yellow journalism aside, if you actually examine the fossil evidence for these animals, their "feathers" appear to have a fundamentally different, and more unique, structure from those in theropods. They're more like plate-shaped scales with bristly projections shooting off them. Nonetheless, it is still a fascinating revelation and one wonders just what kind of function it may have served. Given that it was found way up in Siberia, I would have guessed the dinosaur might have evolved these bristles to protect against winters which would have been cooler than elsewhere in the Jurassic world.