Jabrosky's Crimes Against Fantasy Art

[Jabrosky]

My Nubian heroine Neith comes close to consummating her love with some as-yet unnamed Mediterranean (possibly Greco-Roman) dude. Don't worry, they're not actually doing it yet, but unfortunately you can't see the guy's underwear here.

As a matter of fact, Nubians, whom the Greeks called Aethiopians ("burnt faces"), do appear in Greek mythology from time to time, with notable examples being King Memnon in the Iliad and Perseus's lover Andromeda.

 

[Jabrosky]

King Jarha of Yam
Ancient Egypt and Nubia were not the only kingdoms along the ancient Nile. Egyptian texts dating to the Old Kingdom mention a country called Yam which exported sub-Saharan goods such as ivory and tropical woods. Exactly where Yam was located remains unknown to us, but apparently it lay to the far south upriver of Nubia. For my story's purposes I will place it somewhere in the archaeologically under-explored savanna region we now call South Sudan.

Anyway, my character Jarha here rules Yam as a hegemonic rival to Nubia, and he may act as an antagonist for my Nubian heroine Neith (see earlier posts). The circles on his face are supposed to represent ritually inflicted scars such as those still seen among South Sudanese peoples today.

 

[Jabrosky]

Black Athena
Some scholars of ancient history, most notably Martin Bernal, have put forward the hypothesis that the prominent Greek goddess Athena evolved from the Egyptian Neith. Not only did both goddesses patronize warfare, weaving, wisdom, and justice in their respective cultures, but some Greek traditions actually do place Athena's place of birth somewhere in Africa (or "Libya" as the Greeks called it), so I can see why they would make the connection. Anyway, I thought a Black African Athena would make a cool subject for a quick portrait.

Her hair isn't supposed to be naturally red here, for ancient Egyptians and Nubians would sometimes stain their hair red with henna or ocher.

 

[rhd]

I drew a dark Andromeda once and got asked why she's dark. Lols.

 

[Jabrosky]

I drew a dark Andromeda once and got asked why she's dark. Lols.

So have I, as a matter of fact. I drew this portrait of her a little less than a year ago:

 

[rhd]

I'm wondering, do you want to improve your skills, or are you already working on them? You already have some basic values down but your structure could use some improvement. I can see you're drawing freehand without any structure underneath, which is just another way to draw, you don't have to change that, but of you work on improving your skills it's just going to make you feel better about your concepts. It did for me, plus I can see you love visualizing your characters.

 

[Jabrosky]

I'm wondering, do you want to improve your skills, or are you already working on them? You already have some basic values down but your structure could use some improvement. I can see you're drawing freehand without any structure underneath, which is just another way to draw, you don't have to change that, but of you work on improving your skills it's just going to make you feel better about your concepts. It did for me, plus I can see you love visualizing your characters.

I don't really have any professional ambitions with regards to visual arts right now, so I probably don't have much incentive to improve beyond growing a fan-base of watchers on DeviantArt. That said, I do plan to incorporate more references into my human characters' anatomy and poses so that they look better.

As a matter of fact, I do draw crude little stick figures (or skeletons, gesture drawings, construction frameworks, or whatever) as a preliminary step before putting the finished characters on top. I'm surprised it doesn't show through for you.

 

[Tevaras]

Good morning Jabrosky, very nice . Some lovely pieces, with good variety. Wish I could draw that well. I like you method of faintly drawing stick figures, and filling in the 'flesh' once you have the pose right. Keep at it

 

[rhd]

Very well, but if you want to explore, I'd recommend conceptart.org. Some of the artists' skills are intimidating, however they are open to varied skill sets and give some excellent (though sometimes harsh) feedback, plus they have weekly challenges and the varied ethnicity of your work could use more exposure.

 

[Jabrosky]

Egyptian Dancer's Bust
Portrait of an ancient Egyptian dancing girl who would perform naked at banquets. Fortunately the Egyptians, like other Africans, did not mind nudity that much, which makes sense considering the hot climate they lived in. The rows of dot-shaped beautification scars around her eyes actually owe their inspiration to the Datoga people of Tanzania, but we actually have found female Egyptian mummies with similar tattoos or scars in their skin.

Tyrannosaurus rex Roars

A Huntress's Trophy Shot, colored in Photoshop Elements

 

[Tom]

Great artwork, Jabrosky! I love the individuality you give to your subjects' faces. One suggestion though: to cut down on the rough texture of Prismacolor pencils, consider purchasing a colorless fluid blender marker. It breaks down the pigments in the pencils to produce a smoother texture. I also use Prismacolors and do a one-over with the blender when I'm done to smooth it. I really love my blender.

Prismacolor makes these as part of their individual art markers line and in their colored pencil starter's kit. They probably have them online at Prismacolor's website and at the art store of your choice.

 

[Jabrosky]

I think I actually do have a pencil blender, though it never occurred to me to use it for colored pencil work. Maybe that's why my colored pencil stuff looks rougher than other people's.

 

[Jabrosky]

Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII
Not the first time I've drawn these two most famous Egyptian Queens together, and it may not be the last, but I wanted to retry the subject out of dissatisfaction with my earlier depictions of the pairing.

As you should know by now, Hatshepsut is the dark-skinned Pharaoh on the left while Cleopatra VII is the lighter-skinned Queen on the right. Cleopatra is supposed to resemble the actress Zoe Saldana whereas Hatshepsut's look was based off the model Oluchi Onweagba.

Roman Soldiers
Here's a couple of common legionaries, one with a gladius and another with a javelin, from the ancient Roman Empire. The Roman legionaries' armor actually underwent many revisions in design over the centuries, but I've chosen the most familiar costume, the lorica segmentata, to represent them. These characters' olive skin tones were actually sampled from authentic paintings of Roman people recovered from Fayyum in northern Egypt.

Sobek Unmasked
This is my artistic interpretation of Sobek, the crocodile god in Egyptian mythology. Sobek is probably my favorite male deity in the whole Egyptian tradition, undoubtedly because it's hard to go wrong with big carnivorous reptiles. However, for my interpretation I drew Sobek not as a crocodile himself, as most artists do, but as a man with a crocodile mask. I like the idea that the Egyptian gods' "animal heads" were really masks homologous to those worn by traditional African religious leaders. The red disks in this character's ear lobes are meant to represent the sun, but they were inspired by the ear discs worn by certain Ethiopian tribal groups.

 

[Jabrosky]

Helen the Nubian Princess
My depiction of Helen, the legendary beauty whose face launched a thousand ships and started the Trojan War, has now been colored in Photoshop. Earlier I planned on writing a whole novelized adaptation of the myth, tweaking Helen's heritage so that she became the daughter of the Nubian king Memnon, but now I feel discouraged about bastardizing Greek mythology to such an extent. Maybe I'll recycle what I had outlined for a fully original story with original characters.

 

[Jabrosky]

This line art depicts a prehistoric Nordic warrior named Beohart, the protagonist from a novel I'm in the process of outlining at the moment. Once I get back from vacation, I should be able to scan in the whole drawing and color it in Photoshop Elements.

 

[Jabrosky]

Unfortunately Beohart's novel never came to pass, but I do have some more characters from another story to share!

Pharaoh Sekhotep of Kemet
The heroine of my new story, a female Pharaoh from an alternate-timeline version of ancient Egypt. She’s a headstrong and athletic type who prefers hunting, swimming, and martial arts practice to the nuts and bolts of running a kingdom, although she aims to rule her people as benevolently as she can. Among her biggest pet peeves is putting up with lusty male wannabe-suitors who covet her wealth and beauty.

Olufemi the Nok Mage
This is another original character I created for Sekhotep’s story. I picture Olufemi as a supporting character with mystical powers (i.e. a healer or mage) who joins Sekhotep on some kind of quest across Africa. He is supposed to hail from the Nok culture of ancient West Africa, a culture that may have been ancestral to today’s Nigerian Yoruba.

Ishtar the Babylonian Empress
And last but not least, the villain! Named after a Mesopotamian war goddess, Empress Ishtar of Babylonia is a power-hungry and racist young lady who covets Kemet's wealth and land, and she commands one of the most powerful military forces in the ancient Near East. Can Sekhotep stop her before she can conquer and enslave the Kemetian people?

More art can be found on my Tumblr.

 

[Jabrosky]

The Key to Heaven
The Key to Heaven is a three-part wheel that, once fully assembled, allows the carrier to travel between the earthly realm of mortals and the heavenly realm of gods and ancestor spirits. However, all of the Key's thirds rest in African kingdoms very far away from each other. The upper left component is kept in Mali, the upper right in Kemet, and the bottom one in Zimbabwe.

In my story, the Kemetian Pharaoh Sekhotep must gather all three fragments of the Key so she can access the heavens and find the means to end the drought which plagues her country. But there is a greedy Babylonian Empress who will go out of her way to stop her...

 

[Gurkhal]

Beautiful work! I wished that I could paint as well. Keep it coming!

 

[Jabrosky]

Hildago the Hispanian Vagabond
Hildago is another supporting character I created for Sekhotep and the Key to Heaven. He’s a fast-talking, wise-cracking vagabond hailing from the land of Hispania (now known as Spain), and he starts out filling the cast’s comic relief niche. Sekhotep and Olufemi first bump into him when visiting in the West African kingdom of Mali, where he’s searching for gold and, uh, “los culos de las negras". He quite fancies Sekhotep the moment he sets eyes on her, but will she reciprocate? And just why does he live a wanderer’s life anyway?

 

[Jabrosky]

Maahes the Carcharodontosaurus
Named after one of Kemet's warrior gods, Maahes is a Carcharodontosaurus saharicus whom Kemetian priests have magically brouht back of life for Pharaoh Sekhotep to ride on her quest to recover the fragmented Key to Heaven. The enchanted gold bands over his ankles boost his speed up to match that of a modern automobile. Although an imposing and lethal fighter, Maahes does have an ornery personality as might be expected for an undomesticated dinosaur.

I came up with this concept for a steed while writing the second chapter of Sekhotep's novel. Originally I planned her to ride a much smaller, flying dragon, but then I decided a larger and more powerful theropod would work better for her quest (especially since she has more than one person joining her on her quest). Besides, dragons are tried and true in the fantasy genre, but you don't get so many fantasy novels with dinosaurs instead.