This post should have come before the previous one but I forgot to upload it (It was sitting in my draft box)

A huge part of my childhood and teen years was spent reading books on mythological creatures and myths from all across the world. I was (and have always been) very interested in folklore and fantastical creatures- so I was extremely excited when this book was released.

This book was my first introduction to the idea that it was possible to come up with a comprehensive field guide filled with illustrations based on mixture of folklore and mythological beliefs. After reading this book, I decided to come up with my own interpretations of mythological creatures and create a few of my own. (This has been a personal project for a while) 

A couple of pictures from the Spiderwick Field Guide that illustrate the art style and my inspiration

I loved the sketchy nature of the drawings and the way text sprawled around the illustration to describe the creatures.

I refer back to one of my drawings in the previous post on Initial Drawings that tried out this style of ‘recorded observation’:

However, I didn’t add colour as I preferred the clean nature of the pen and ink medium, instead playing with the nature of lines to create the illusion of shading and texture. This was an idea that was brought over to my final work.