Your sanity is a chili dog. And Chthulu’s worked up an appetite.
This was a merch design my Twitch chat and I imagined months ago, and I finally got around to making it. This one’s dedicated to your Sega nostalgia and your love of Lovecraftian terror. Check out the Fourthwall merch store below.
Inktober has come and gone, and I’m not going to lie: this year’s prompts were bad.
I’ve had a dubious relationship with Inktober for the past few years. For one thing, I rarely finish them before the month is out. For another, the creator’s trademark shenanigans and suspicious “parallel thinking” left a bad taste in my mouth years ago. But I was craving a drawing challenge last month, so I said, why not.
And, hoo boy, were these prompts stinkers.
Usually there are a couple of related prompts in the list, and I like this, because it gives you the challenge of trying to figure out how you’re going to differentiate them. But this year’s list was almost entirely travel themed, which resulted in a lot of redundancy.
I did my best to make them weird, gave up in the middle, and just started drawing octopuses based on my Twitch chat’s suggestions — a tradition we might continue as Octo October next year. In the meantime, enjoy my efforts! And no, almost none of these were done on the appropriate day, nor did I finish until November. I’m a rebel that way.
This one was based off an angler fish. If you look closely, you can see where the male angler fish bit into its skin, becoming nothing more than a pair of gonads for its indifferent hostess. (I didn’t actually draw this, but it’s there.)
Here’s where I knew this Inktober was going to be rough. I drew a creature based on a pair of binoculars, not realizing Binoculars would be the prompts for day four. I was the kid who rarely read the directions all the way through, in case you’re wondering.
I like to imagine this one is a benevolent parasite who eats your callouses and toe fungus when you wear him. Try getting that out of your head now.
This is about as exotic of a pet as I could imagine.
Since I already drew a creature with binoculars, the only solution was to draw a creature even more ocular than that.
This one was the “live long and prosper” Vulcan hand sign turned into an alien face.
I don’t know where these stamps are from, but given how carnivorous they look, I assume they’re all from Australia.
This ended up looking like Sasquatch on Ozempic for some reason.
This one ended up being my favorite. Imagine this looking down at you on a beach day. Put on that SPF one billion.
Carcinization is the tendency of crustaceans to evolve into crab-like species. But I like to imagine it as a human wizard’s spell that accidentally backfired.
Watch where you snack!
Spider Turtle would like to know why you disturbed his slumber.
Thus continuing my obsession with drawing horrifying space orbs.
This dragon salesman (salesman dragon?) ended up looking a lot like Trogdor.
This is the exact moment I gave up on the Inktober prompts and drew skull mushrooms instead. This, also, is one of my favorites.
I drifted slightly back towards the prompt with this one.
This was the nail in the prompt coffin. Journal? Really? After passport and guidebook? How many bibliographical prompts can you have in a single Inktober? Anyway, this weird creature is better than a journal.
This is where things started drifting octopus-ward.
From this point forward, I started taking prompts from Twitch chat to draw octopuses.
Now, that’s a spicy meatball.
This could have gone a very different direction, and you’re welcome that it didn’t.
This one grants you eight wishes.
All I’m going to say is, this one is based on a notoriously feared meme from the late 90’s, and you can blame TheHamOfficial for the suggestion. (They’re also a phenomenal illustrator, so go follow them, even if it’s against your better judgement.)
Kersplat!
Spilling the tea while looking fabulous.
Alas, poor Yorick. I straight up ate him, Harukio.
Munch on that.
Behold, the horror.
Chat told me to draw poo poo pee pee. I can think of no better conclusion to this year’s Inktober. Until next time!
Greetings, citizens. August was a busy month, so I only got out a handful of art card videos. But there are some fun stories attached to these, even got to send the mimic sandwich drawing to the man who inspired it, Adventures in Aardia! Here are the videos. You can also find them on the YouTube and Instagram pages.
This past month I returned to TikTok to begin a new series of videos where I draw an artist trading card with Copic inks and markers with bits of commentary. It’s been fun so far and way more manageable than the big productions I used to make of them! If you want to check out the individual videos, the links are below:
They’re also archives on the YouTube and Instagram channels, too. Enjoy!
Some day you wake up and you just need to draw a crab with a little cowboy hat and a lasso.
Credit to my friend Daedlogistics for getting these parody lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” stuck in my head while I was streaming the drawing process:
I’m Crab Cowboy / On a seahorse I ride / I’m wanted / Buttered and fried