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^ It may be titled "Breath", but it actually looked like some kind of water goddess to me. Still beautifully colored!


The Goddamn Batman
This is my personal interpretation of everyone’s favorite Caped Crusader, DC Comics’ Batman. I chose the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) to represent his motif, and since vampire bats are native to Central and South America, I gave my version of Batman a Guatemalan Maya background. In keeping with his new Maya heritage, I replaced his traditionally blue colors with jade-green. Nonetheless it was a challenge to balance out the Maya cultural elements in his design with his familiar costume.

^Nice! Are you going to do Aquaman? Also, I'm pretty sure that your required to draw Superman, as he's the iconic image of these types of characters, from the spandex outfit to the sense of justice.

Thank you! I find this last piece of yours very cute, btw. I have a weakness for superheroes.

OK so I got up with the itch to paint again today. So I did the reasonable thing: I scratched the itch! I sketched it with pencil, veeery thinly and used watercolors to paint and a .4 pen to add some dark lines for detail.

Cuidightheach:

Weird name I know. He is a brownie and thus I wanted him to have a gaelic name. Correct me if it is wrong, I used one of those naming sites and it could be far off, but it is supposed to be Irish Gaelic and its supposed to mean Helpful. I figured for a brownie it was appropriate!

^ Is that supposed to be a dog-like nose he has?


Cretaceous California Gurl
When the song “California Gurls” played on the radio today, this was exactly the scene that came to my imagination. Complete with the cheerful-looking Lythronax argestes in the background. Admittedly that new tyrannosaurine was found in Utah rather than California, but these dinosaurs probably had an extensive range, and I wanted to jump on the Lythronax paleo-art bandwagon anyway.

Sort of? He was supposed to look like a story book illustration of sorts, I thought it went well with the ears.

It does go well with them.


Oyesan the Carthaginian
The exact name of Oyesan’s ethnic group remains buried under the sands of history, but these West African people were living in the area around Carthage before Dido and her Phoenician colonists came over and assimilated them. Oyesan herself trained and fought alongside the famous Hannibal Barca in Carthage’s wars against Rome, but rumor has it that their relationship reached a far more intimate level than the usual soldierly comradeship.

I have to admit that Oyesan’s name and Carthaginian heritage were something of an afterthought after I finished drawing the character in this pose. When I first designed her, I didn’t really have any specific African nation in mind, and in fact I was wary of assigning her to any modern-day African people due to her fantastical costume. In the end I chose Carthage because I don’t think I ever drew a Carthaginian character before.

My portrait of Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian commander known for threatening Rome and leading an army of North African elephants across the Alps. Although Carthage started out as a Phoenician colony, its empire did incorporate people from both sides of the Mediterranean, so I didn't want to portray Hannibal as fully Middle Eastern. Instead I wanted him to have a "mulatto" look that combined Middle Eastern and native African elements. The beauty scar design on his left cheek is supposed to show a Carthaginian religious symbol, but he would have picked it up from African locals who had a longstanding tradition of ritual scarification.

Carthaginian Shrine
Quick sketch of a shrine to the goddess Tanit as it might have looked in ancient Carthage. Unfortunately reliable information on ancient Carthaginian architecture proved surprisingly hard to come by, especially since the Romans utterly destroyed the original city before rebuilding it in their own style. Therefore a lot had to be left to my imagination. Many historical computer games such as Age of Empires and Rome: Total War have given the Carthaginians more or less Romanesque or Middle Eastern architecture, but for my rendition I chose a more West African flavor. While it is true that Carthage started out as a Phoenician colony, I'm sure they might have been open to local African influences which became prominent as the civilization evolved. The little dashes on most of the pillars are supposed to represent sticks as seen on some Malian buildings today.

Another interpretation of Hannibal Barca:

"I shall use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome!" Hannibal Barca announces as he brandishes his battle-ax atop the Italian Alps.

This is actually my second rendition of the great Carthaginian warrior. My first image of him was a simple portrait that portrayed him as a Phoenician/African mix, but for this second version I decided to go with a more fully West African heritage for his character. Since Hannibal’s surname means thunder or lightning in the Carthaginian language, I gave him an ax similar to that of the West African thunder god Shango.

WIP so far. I'm doing a little experimenting.

[img][800:600]http://31.media.tumblr.com/31d34ab1ea21cbef48c99199d6de87c7/tumblr_mw6jjzejma1sj3fp8o1_1280.jpg[/img]

[img][800:600]http://31.media.tumblr.com/8f9b0bd8a506794f33708d909f4a84dd/tumblr_mw6jjzejma1sj3fp8o2_1280.jpg[/img]

[img][800:657]http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/316/3/9/hannibal_will_see_you_now_by_brandonspilcher-d6u2k86.png[/img]
Hannibal Will See You Now
Third time in two days that I’ve drawn Hannibal Barca, but this time I’ve added some architecture in the background. He’s supposed to be standing on the ramparts of some palace or bastion in his native Carthage. The scene’s composition was supposed to resemble the leader diplomacy screens in the game Civilization V

[img][800:652]http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/317/6/8/leonidas_of_sparta_by_brandonspilcher-d6u3pgb.png[/img]
Leonidas of Sparta
My vision of King Leonidas I of Sparta, the great Greek warrior king known for leading 300 of his countrymen against the Persian invasion. Vastly outnumbered though they may have been, they nonetheless put up a formidable fight before betrayal sent them to their doom.

When drawing this, I knew I wanted to channel the movie 300 in Leonidas’s look, but at the same time I wanted him to look better-armored and more olive-skinned than the Hollywood vision everyone recognizes. The general composition of the image was based on the leader diplomacy screens in the computer game Civilization V. And yes, there are palm trees growing in Greece. Most of the country has a climate similar to that of Southern California.

[img][800:624]http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/317/5/9/cleopatra_vii_of_the_ptolemaic_kingdom_by_brandonspilcher-d6u4lg2.png[/img]
Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemaic Kingdom
Cleopatra VII, the last matriarch of the Ptolemaic Dynasty and the most famous of them all, stands on a balcony within eyesight of the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria. Like my last two drawings of rulers from the ancient world, this picture’s composition is supposed to resemble the leader diplomacy screens in the computer game Civilization V. In addition I wanted the piece to evoke the warm and sunny Caribbean, since Ptolemaic Egypt was similar to the modern Caribbean insofar as it represented a crossroads between European and African cultures.

I think next I will draw the fully native Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut, since the darker sistas need love too.

[img][800:652]http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/317/6/1/hatshepsut_of_egypt_by_brandonspilcher-d6u5qva.png[/img]
Hatshepsut of Egypt
In continuation of my Civilization V custom leader scenes series, here’s the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut. She used not to get as much attention as Cleopatra, but she’s become one of my favorite Egyptian matriarchs due to her success as a woman ruler (especially contrasted with the more tragic Cleo). In addition, the darker sistas need love too.

[img][800:600]http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/317/6/a/no_aces_up_my_sleeves_by_geekyteen-d6u69q0.jpg[/img]

The colors in the original photo came out dull, so I had to tweak them in Photoshop. The result looks super grainy. Oh well.

I'm never doing anything like that again.

/\ Wow, that's awesome. Very cool seeing the steps leading to the image...it has an iconic property.

A photo I took. I love photography, whether or not you consider it art is up to you.

This one is of Stonehenge, in case you couldn't tell.