Xenonaut's World of Chaos

Hey there! This blog is mostly posting various nonsense and possibly some art! STATUS: Currently formatting blog, don't expect to see anything for a while.

[omegaxenonaut]

Introducing the Xenonaut Museum of Art History-- a comprehensive archive of my sketchbooks from the past 4 years.

From the day I could pick up a pencil, I was drawing pictures. I started with lines and shapes and continued on to creatures and characters. I've never really stopped. However, I've always been reluctant to share my work with others beyond my immediate social circle. I felt that each drawing I made was not as representative of me as the larger whole, and without that larger whole how others viewed and judged me would be based on an incomplete premise. As I move on to a new chapter of my life, I feel like a look back at where I've been and how far I've come is past due. A first step in sharing my work, and through that who I am, with the world. Therefore, I have gathered most of my illustrative work from the past four years (amounting to over 1300 drawings in total), arranged it in a rough chronological order, and spent a few weeks converting it into a digital format that can be viewed in an online archive. All these drawings have been sorted into folders representing each of my notebooks, allowing for easy viewing. I will add that the second half is generally more high-quality than the first (as is wont to be when one hones one's craft over time), but there are some pieces where I think I did a good job even in my earliest sketchbooks. Of these I will be posting some of what I consider to be the best and/or most interesting from each folder, adding context or commentary if relevant. These will be tagged #curator's pick, and I will eventually arrange them into a Moments thread. Some of the pieces omitted from the #curator's pick may be because I seek to flesh out their concepts into more complete works-- games, movies, etc. Some pieces may be fanart of things I admired at the time, and most of the time still admire now. This will be fully acknowledged, and I take no credit for the concepts behind these pieces. In a few months' time I will also be adding 2-3 notebooks of my more recent drawings to the archive, as well as posting what I consider the most interesting of this batch to my social media. This will continue onto my contemporary work (some of which I've posted already), and hopefully over time this will become an overall archive of my art going forward. All of this is the full picture of myself that I have wanted to share for so long, but for so long have been unable to. I hope that you will enjoy or at least be interested in tracing the development of my art, and in doing so see the whole picture of who I am and what I can do.

[o-craven-canto]

Some of my favorites from C. M. Kosemen's sketchbook Tangent Worlds:

Two friends, a fungus-man and a meat ghost with multiple eyes, are baffled by the implications of a triangle that should not exist.

A feminine spirit rescues another from torment at the hands of malevolent beings.

Anatomical studies and drawings of animals which evolved in a universe where telekinesis is real. The oversized brains of these Telekinesizoans are used for lifting the animal and manipulating food items. Only a small section of the brains are used for conscious perception, effectively making most Telekinesizoans quite “dim.” An “advanced” form, with almost no visible appendages.

Advanced Telekinesizoans move not by levitating themselves, but by manipulating the air flows around them. This predatory form (a Polteropterygid,) strikes its victim with stone missiles that it hurls by telekinetic force.

Different species of Telekinesizoan herbivores have different "signature” items that they sculpt and carry with themselves as they forage. These ornate items, carved telekinetically out of stone or wood, serve both as display structures and weapons.

The para-insect species seen on the left had the remarkable ability to speak, not unlike a parrot. I saw them repeat word-like sounds in idle moments, yet their forest world contained no intelligent species. I was unnerved and hurriedly severed all connections with that particular Earth.

Sketches of “final beings” that will live a billion years from now. These beings have the ability to look into the “space between spaces” and catch glimpses of the past.

Sketches of reptiles which fly by “propellers” powered by coils of tightly-winding muscle fibers. The propeller-blade-like “fingers” reverse their pitch as they rewind, ensuing continual forward thrust.

On the distant world of Zarnia, gravity is high and plant life resembles flat, green-and-purple tiles of road pavement. This combination of flat terrain and hard surfaces has enabled the evolution of a spectacular way of life: Zarnia has animals with wheels instead of legs. Left, This long-necked herbivore defends itself with mace-like swings of its armored head. Right, Male and female varieties of a herbivorous tetracycl species.

It is hard to perceive time directly when moving across dimensions. I couldn’t tell which forms were the ancestors and which were the descendants in this transition between intelligent, human-like beings and asinine reptiles.

All beings seen on this page are descendants of nanotechnological “crystal machines” which blossomed into their own ecology after being created as industrial tools by an older race. Reproducing through “intelligently designed” blueprints modified and mutated through errors of transcription, they exhibited a spectacular, quasi-Darwinian evolutionary process in action. The world of the crystal beasts was also noteworthy in that it was home to actual “ghosts” and “spirits;” vagrant AIs and semisentient processing software left over from the age of industry. Such “ghosts,” transmitted through radio organs present in most species, could “possess” individual animals and get them to engage in unusual, self-aware behavior, or even produce virgin births and “twisted” offspring drastically different from their parents.

A “plains sweeper” which ran across grasslands and fed on clouds of small “insects.”

Members of an alien group of animals which have convergently evolved to resemble dinosaurs of the earth’s past.

Sketch of the vast beings that lived on salt flats and fed on air.

Three species of cursorial “advanced” Martian spiders, with fully erect limbs, hips derived from the initial leg segments, internal pseudoskeletons and advanced respiration. The species seen here is one of the top predators of this world.

Visions of winged reptiles (unrelated to pterosaurs,) that sail on the calm lakes like living boats. Their long, supple necks help them catch fish. It seems like not all saillizards come from the same lineage - there were many different combinations of limbs, wings and sails.

Art is the most certain sign of intelligence. This page shows a selection of dinosauroid cave-art. Cave art depicting a pack of tyrant-raptors, dangerous predators of the dinosauroids.

Sketch of a neosauropod gentleman with a tasteful covering of body paint and an ornate smoking pipe that denotes his status as a herd-orator. The sonorous conversations of these beings can be heard, like thunder, for hundreds of miles.

[michaeldeforge]

bicycling

[weirdlandtv]

Concept art for METROPOLIS (1927) by Erich Kettelhut.

[weepingwidar]

John Jacobsmeyer (American, 1964) - Danger (2013)

[bogleech]

I just learned that in the 70's Toei wanted to compete with Godzilla and Gamera with its own original kaiju but the project got scrapped before any filming or FX work began.

All we have is concept art of DEVIL MANTA who would have been fucking awesome

[wodeworm]

Vampire

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

The Phantom Nudibranch: this sea slug's body is almost completely transparent, revealing the delicate network of organs within

The scientific name of this species is Melibe colemani, and it's regarded as one of the most elusive nudibranchs in the world. It's also known as the phantom nudibranch (or ghost nudibranch) because its body is largely transparent, and the sea slug's digestive glands are clearly visible. The network of glands make it look almost like a mass of tangled yarn.

Above: the outline of the nudibranch's head is visible toward the upper left-hand corner of this photo

These strange-looking creatures can measure up to 5cm long, and they're typically found on the coral reefs that surround the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Above: close-up of the sea slug's head, showing a pair of rhinophores (which look like bunny ears) and an oral hood/mouth

The phantom nudibranch actively hunts smaller molluscs and crustaceans, using an expandable oral hood to capture and ingest its prey. The sea slug's head is also equipped with a pair of rhinophores, which are chemosensory organs that resemble eyestalks or "bunny ears;" the rhinophores can detect chemicals in the surrounding environment, allowing the nudibranch to find prey and locate other members of the same species.

Above: a phantom nudibranch with its oral hood stretched open

This species was discovered by an underwater photographer named Neville Coleman in 2004, and it was formally described eight years later.

Sources & More Info:

Systematics and Biodiversity: Diversification of Filter-Feeding Nudibranchs: Two Remarkable New Species of Melibe

Reef ID Books: Melibe colemani, Iconic Nudibranch

The Slug Site: Melibe colemani

Nudibranch Domain: Melibe colemani

Bubbles Underwater & Beyond: Melibe colemani, the Grail of Nudibranchs

[anarchotolkienist]

The same amount of children I work with on a weekly basis were just killed by the US and Israel in a strike on a primary school.

All of the delightful ones, the funny ones, the silly ones, the ones who are shitheads to one another, the ones who get so upset that they cry over mkssing a shot in five-aside football, the ones who grabbed the decorative glitter and threw it over half the room, the one who handed me a drawing of a funny little man with big teeth and said 'This is you; it's a picture of you', the ones who screamed and cried and laughed and kicked and ran around and played and smiled, and smiled, and smiled, and smiled. Kids just like them, but for race and nationality, blown to pieces by a missile launched somewhere on the other side of the world.

Death to America.

[adoomado]

Background paintings by Shichiro Kobayashi:

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena The Adolescence of Utena (J.C. Staff, 1999).

2. Revolutionary Girl Utena The Adolescence of Utena - Ohtori Academy (J.C. Staff, 1999).

3. Revolutionary Girl Utena The Adolescence of Utena - Rose Garden Platform (J.C. Staff, 1999).

4. Revolutionary Girl Utena - Anthy's Greenhouse Background (J.C. Staff, 1997).

[1five1two]

Gianni Colombo. 1937-1993.

[tsarina-anadyomene]

thinking about skyrim sometimes feels like thinking about the maximally abstract idea of a video game

[tsarina-anadyomene]

or like there's a level of abstraction that's akin to dream logic. there are puzzles that aren't really puzzles but just represent the idea of a puzzle being there. there is combat without any sense of skill or strategy, the difficulty numbers are just a test of enduring the same thing for longer. there are hundreds of quests of shapeless nothing, nakedly directing you to fetch or clear or kill.

[tsarina-anadyomene]

it's seeing someone you know in a dream when they don't look like themselves. it's playing the video games they play on a nickelodeon sitcom in the 2000s. it's nonsense

[leo-nid-as]

like. the united states just bombed a country and killed its leader. there should be global outrage but there never will be because people in the global south are dehumanized

[juney-blues]

please enjoy this unedited clip of House (1977)

[sendentaryworm]

Assortment of crustaceans from shrimp trawler bycatch(Not in actualy scale)

A love letter to the unnamed, undescribed and overlooked crustaceans

A lot of the species I collect usually aren't subject to underwater photography or aqaurium trades, and let alone commercial uses as food hence they end up in piles of bycatch. They get relatively little attention and remain as a collective, discarded , grinded in fish food or becoming colorless specimens in jars. And yet they're colorful and diverse with their strange appendages and bristles, dots of pigmentation forming their own stories to tell. I think they deserve a little spot of their own in our appreciation towards marine life.

Unnwanted or low value catch are dumped together before being trucked away to be grinded into fish feed in factories.

The collected specimens are either discarded by workers or left in bycatch piles, deemed as unappealing. Obtaining them means getting my hands soaked in foul smelling ooze excreted by the mass of death. Their entry into our peripheral is not the most flattering, but peeling away the mucus and muck are organisms so bizarre and wonderful it's as if we weren't meant to behold them with our eyes.

My "studio" that I photograph their fresh coloration with.

And to end their story with proper adoration, inviting them as my muse, I hope, is much more deserving, even if they're long gone to agree with the arrangements.

[cyborgized]

Self-Awareness by Katsuhiro Õtomo

[jareckiworld]

Lee Jaeseok — The Instructions with the Body (acrylic, canvas, 2018)