Terry Pratchett has a way with words.   Sometimes I wonder if I should feel warm and safe and amused while reading about horrible monsters, world shattering terrors and casual murder.  Sometimes it just feels right.

Anyway, here is a drawing:

Here’s another one from my old claybord cache.

Cheerful, yes?

I just finished reading a book called Pandemonium and Parade – Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai by one Michael Dylan Foster.  The book is a discussion of the way traditional Japanese monsters and spirits were viewed/believe in/studied over the last few hundred years.  It is a pretty academic text, but I found it quite interesting.

The cultural conception of yokai has gone through a number of changes over the centuries, but I was fascinated to discover one of the earliest ways yokai were consciously studied was as an encyclopedia or bestiary.  It is interesting to think about the current concepts of “monsters” in Japanese popular media as being bred from encyclopedic collections.  Odd to think of something as frivolous seeming as Pokemon being the cultural descendent of Japan’s introspective obsession with it’s own supernatural/folkloric history.  It is also interesting to note how the notion of making up new creatures for the sake of describing and collecting them as entertainment  (Pokemon) actually goes all the way back to the author of the first recorded yokai specific encyclopedia, Toriyama Sekien.

If you’re interested in bestiaries, monsters and discussions of what these things reveal to us about the culture that created them, check out Foster’s book.  If nothing else, the chapter about the late 20th century will make you wish Mizuki Shigeru’s work would get translated and released here in the US.

This week we get a new print in the gallery.  I’m sure you all agree, this is very exciting.  The February print is coming along nicely as well, so there is more excitement to come in the weeks ahead.

We are just 1 week into the new year and things are getting busy already.  I am on track to edition my January print within a week, with work beginning on the next 2 prints already.  Stay tuned here to see those prints as they start coming off the press.

Megamoth Studio has a new website for the drawing classes.  We are still working on getting all of the extra features updated, but about a million thanks go to Soojin for getting the bones of the beast up and running.  I am also excited because I will begin putting the new Megamoth Anthology together soon.  Sometimes it feels like a lot of work, but mostly it feels awesome.

Speaking of awesome, I landed myself a large stack of comics over the holiday.  I wanted to highlight Daisy Kutter – The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi.  Kibuishi is probably better known for his work as the editor of the Flight anthologies and his continuing series, Amulet.  It must be acknowledged the Wild West steam punk is pretty much always a good thing and  Daisy Kutter is a great example.  Kibuishi’s stories skew towards a slightly younger audience in terms of narrative, but they are the sort of stories I was looking for when I was a younger audience.  They are full of adventure, magic, suspense and great visual designs.  After reading it, I found myself having to draw something like it.

I sometimes enjoy hand-working my prints.  It’s actually a pretty important part of my process to hand-work early state proofs to decide how to proceed on a print.  Every once in a while I will watercolor an artist’s proof of a  finished print. The results look something like this:

That’s it for this week. Until next time!

Here is December’s print. “We’ll Go Together”:

I originally intended to have an etching for this month, but this came out first.  January will be an etching month.  It will be awesome.