beholder.

Dungeons & Dragons changed my life.
for serious,
when i was a kid,
i loved monsters,
but when my childhood friend liam came back from
a february school vacation spent visiting his weird cousins in vermont,
with tales of imagined adventures,
and role-playing awesomeness,
accompanied by a brief example of just how dope storytelling in
a hobbity habitat of pretend swords and sorcery could be?
holy sh!tballs,
i was hooked,
instantly,
and i learned all there was to learn about bugbears (which are neither),
owlbears (which are kinda both)
and also orcs, ettins, ettercaps, hook horrors, helmed horrors,
catoblepas, and on and on and on.
do i have a monster manual?
i have ALL the monster manuals.
do i have the monstrous compendium?
neighbors,
i AM the monstrous compendium-
and one of the monsters that always seemed totally insane,
straight off of the the cover of that binder of battlebeasts,
from the heydays of larry elmore and jeff easley,
is, was, and remains the eye tyrant.
yup.
the floating tentacled toothy ball of magic and death
and crazy oddbody bulbous cyclopean power,
also known as the beholder.
mmhmmmmm.
today,
for valentine's day,
i channeled a little bit of that old school D&D natural twenty citical hit sh!t,
and i painted up a little somethin' special.
check the floating-fury-and-levitating-love-type teleport:

BOOOOOM
it's a beauty beholder.
y'feel me?
a heart tyrant,
with extended seventh-day succulent stalking ioun aortas,
and a corona of capillary cauldrons,
labelled with the week's roll call.
why?
because eight days a week is how you show you care.
the beatles told me that.
-
yeah,
it's painted on the inside of a cut up cardboard christmas box.
so?
the red hearts are cut out of a timecard, too.
however,
i didn't just make my usual coarse and cheap art, though, guys.
nope.
in the spirit of saint valentine i even spent a whole 'nother $1.50
on some new paints, in pinky pink and a couple of variable berry reds.
ha.
*
i think nostalgia is creeping into my hands,
and i autonomically activated all my most favorite things in one picture.
before i had a chance to even consider that i would've wanted to...
that's real.
the skullish jaws, the wet hearts, the eyes on eyes on eyes,
with overlapping concentric circles, and collage clipping accoutrements.
all of it,
automatically added.
i'm predictable, or reliable, or a one-trick magic act,
but i'll tell you what else i am-
i'm making stuff,
and that counts for a whole lot.
i like it,
and there may be more of this where that came from.
i know a whole lot of creatures and chaos-aligned combatants i'd like to illustrate.
i'm excited for what's next,
because the object, obviously, isn't the biggest or the most beautifullest-
we stay ugly over here, and we stay dope,
because the main objective is MORE.
that heart is on the attack,
but it's executed to the limits of my current ability.
it isn't pretty, but it might be expert,
and i'm thinking that might sorta be my thing;
never quiet, never soft.....