The Seventh One. The Name Of The Game Was Insect Monster.

The seventh one. The name of the game was insect monster. 

This is Kabutomushi, fierce giant insect samurai out to smash towns and villages. The drawing is ink on brown paper. 

So I got to see a super cool friend of mine this weekend, whom I haven't seen since 2008, and while I'm really happy about that, I am currently full of all kinds of conflicted emotion.

I haven't the money to go back and visit England, because I am poor, and the visit that was going to happen has been cancelled for reasons. My intention to spend Bonfire Night with friends just doesn't look like it's going to happen, and that is crushing inside. 

Basically, nearly all of my friends live far enough away that getting to them is impossible for me at the moment. I suppose it just burns all the worse when you get to be near one of those friends and then distance happens again. 

I am thankful for the friends that live here, but it still feels very isolated. 

In short: 

Day 11. The prompt today was alien. This person is named Ned. Ned is an actor. Aliens can be actors, too. 

Brown paper, ink. 

Day 10. Prompt was ghost/phantom. I like drawing ghosts and wraiths. My sketchbooks are full of them, funny enough. 

Brown paper, ink, white paint, so forth and so on. 

Day 20. Today's prompt was Southeast Asian mythology. This one is a bit of a stretch, and as far as I know and can find, it doesn't directly correspond to any established mythology. Allow me to explain myself.

One of my mother's dear friends is from the Philippines. Now, she told the story once of 'black water', water with a malicious spirit, that purposefully drowns people. It can appear as whirlpools and waterspouts, or as perfectly still black pools and lagoons. This friend believes very really and truly in this idea of 'black water', and has been known to avoid any and all water phenomena associated with it. I can't find a specific term for this. I've tried. If someone else has heard of it, please tell me, because I find it really interesting.

All inks all the time.  

Day 21. The prompt today was Mesoamerican mythology. I ran into a problem with this one; mainly, there seems to be a huge gap in the scholarship about folkloric monsters in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures. Oh, sure, I found lots of gods and the like, but defining gods as monsters seems like dodgy territory to me. If anyone knows of non-divine supernatural creatures or spirits from those cultures, please send them my way, because now I have The Curiosity.

In light of not finding a huge amount of material to work from, I went with the idea that dogs, and specifically the Xoloitzcuintli dog, was believed to be a guide to the underworld. Now, psychopomps aren’t monsters strictly speaking, and the god associated with the dogs, Xolotl, isn’t a monster either, but there you go.

Dry media to mitigate page buckling.