Misplaced Lens Cap
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KIROKAZE
Jules of Nature
Cosmic Funnies
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Origami Around
#extradirty
hello vonnie
trying on a metaphor
Cosimo Galluzzi
@theartofmadeline
todays bird
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
Not today Justin
Today's Document
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@tyrannoninja
Links to my merchandise
If you wish to support me as an artist and author, please do check out the following links where I sell art prints and books: My Redbubble store
My INPRNT store
And my Amazon Author page
Finally, my official website is brandonpilchersart.com.
Khumetian Crocodile Warrior
This is a marker drawing of a Khumetian crocodile warrior from my ancient-era fantasy world. He would be one example representing a phenomenon in this world called therianthropy, wherein a human being becomes part animal through an expensive magical rite that must be performed at night during a full moon.
In Khumetian culture, warriors who become crocodile therianthropes traditionally pledge their service to the crocodile god Sebek and make their living both as guards for the god's temples as well as amphibious special forces in the Khumetian army. They are vicious, powerful fighters and excellent swimmers, but as part of their transformation, they lose their ability to speak human language and assume an ectothermic metabolism that makes them lethargic in colder weather.
Throw Them to the Crocodiles!
A marker doodle of my OC Pharaoh Neferkaret of Khumet delivering one of her favorite sentences to the most egregious offenders.
As it happens, Neferkaret is not uncommonly tyrannical as far as theocratic monarchs go. If anything, she cares so much for her subjects and loved ones that anyone who dares pose a threat to their lives or well-being will receive justice in a snap. Literally speaking, of course!
Native American Huntress
It being the 4th of July today made me want to doodle a Native American huntress. After all, you can't get much more American than a Native American.
Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans!
Zaynab Bit-Zabbai in Full
This is another marker drawing of a character named Zaynab Bit-Zabbai, who is from the same ancient-era fantasy setting as Julio Antonio and Neferkaret. She is the warrior sultana of an Ahrabiyyan kingdom called Al-Batra, famous for its temples and other structures having been carved into the sides of cliffs.
In the story I have outlined for her, a fanatical prophet named Zekariya who claims to represent the god Bel manipulates Zaynab into attacking some troops under Antonio's command, and Neferkaret takes it upon herself to counterattack Zaynab's forces on her Valerian lover's behalf. But Zekariya has at his disposal a power far greater than weapons of iron…
Ahrabiyyan Camel Skirmisher
This concept art shows an Ahrabiyyan camel skirmisher from my ancient-era fantasy world. Most of the Ahrabiyyan peoples subsist as nomadic herders and merchants, but some urban communities have developed here and there across the otherwise arid landscape, most notably the city of Al-Batra with its famous cliffside-hewn structures.
Being better adapted to the desert environment than horses or other equine animals, dromedary camels are the mount of choice for Ahrab warriors. Their scent is in fact said to repel and disorient equine opponents.
As far as this artwork goes, I am pretty proud of how the camel came out, considering I don’t draw them that often. The crescent shield is inspired by ancient Persian ones, as I always felt the crescent shape had the most distinctly Middle Eastern look as far as possible shield shapes go.
Julio Antonio of Valerium
A marker portrait of my character Julio Antonio, a general and statesman from the Valerian Republic. Having become triumvir of the republic's territorial acquisitions in the east, Julio has fallen for the charms of Pharaoh Neferkaret of Khumet, in whom he sees a potential ally against his rival Actavio Kesare. The more their alliance blossoms into love, the more Actavio desires to turn all of Valerium against them...
Neferkaret Without Her Crown
A marker drawing of my fantasy OC Pharaoh Neferkaret of Khumet having taken off her crown for the evening and standing on a balcony projecting from her palace. I have to say she's quite a beautiful character with or without her crown.
Khumetian Palace Guards
A marker doodle of two Khumetian palace guards from my ancient-era fantasy setting. The leopard skins they wear around their linen kilts are a marker of their status as elite warriors in service of the Khumetian pharaoh.
Hoofer Hunt
It is morning on the open plains, and a huntress is stalking a herd of savanna hoofers on top of a rocky overhang. Not only are the little hoofed mammals tasty, but their striped hides are striking enough to be lucrative exports for the savanna tribes.
In this prehistoric-fantasy setting, "hoofer" is a term referring to various species of primitive equines that eke out their existence in the shadow of the great saurians. The species you see here is adapted to the world's savanna regions and is inspired by the Mesohippus of our world's Oligocene epoch.
Autism ‘activism’ is probably the thing that pisses me off the most as an autistic girl. It seems that most of these people either believe that being polite, sociable, and well read is somehow a horrible imposition on the poor autistics or that they’re a master race who are superior to those poor neurotypicals.
Like none of them are organizing for more funding devoted to special education or raising the resource limit for disability benefits. Nope they’re just a bunch of fuckin posers.
I’m no fan of aspie supremacism, and obviously autism is not simply a superpower or a quirky personality trait that some people treat it as. In many ways, it does count as a disability. That being said, my own experience has been that a lot of autistic people can be way too negative about their condition, which I see as contributing to its pathologization and I personally find rather triggering. I get that the disabling aspects can be hard to deal with, and there are of course autistic people with higher support needs than others, but it’s not like I would give up my autism entirely. For at least some people, neurodivergence can have its positives as well as the negatives.
I wonder if Michael Jackson had a weird racist form of body dysmorphia. He might not have been able to help his vitiligo, but he did get a nose job and wear his hair straight. I've had a friend of mine suggest he wanted to be White, and that does seem likely to me the more I think about it.
I know the whole story about Medusa being a SA victim whom Athena turned into a monster is a later Roman addition and wasn't in the original Greek myths, but somehow it seems so in character with how the gods in the Greco-Roman pantheon behaved as a general rule. It speaks to how unfair the gods in earlier mythologies, as well as the cultures that produced them, could be.
I wouldn't be too hard on Perseus for killing Medusa though, even if we accept the SA story as "canon" (as if ancient myths ever had an established canon). He might not have necessarily known her backstory at the time he killed her. Who knows, maybe he felt awash with guilt once he found out the truth later?
Actually, someone should draw or write that...
Barraging the Blademaw
From atop the earthen rampart that protects their village, these defenders are barraging a ravenous blademaw with volleys of boulders.
I imagine this scene takes place in a later time period in the setting’s history than some of my other prehistoric-fantasy illustrations. During this era, some of the human cultures would have developed agriculture and metallurgy after settling down in permanent villages. It would roughly correspond to the Neolithic to Copper Age of our own world’s history, or perhaps the early Iron Age in western Africa.
I hate the vast, vast majority of online discourse on the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. Not only did the modern construct of race not exist back then, but it's been my experience that arguers on both sides of the argument are often full of racist or ethno-nationalistic crap and can't be bothered to see reason.
I do consider ancient Egypt to have been a fundamentally indigenous Northeast African civilization with its primary cultural roots in the predynastic cultures of Upper Egypt (that is, southern Egypt, or the part of Egypt that lies further up the Nile). For that reason, I suspect they would have been darker-skinned on average than they're often portrayed in contemporary media. They certainly would not have looked like Arnold Vosloo, Yul Brynner, or Joel Edgerton, unless of course you count the Macedonian Ptolemies.
When I look at the ancient Egyptian so-called "Table of Nations" from their Book of Gates (see for example this reproduction), I notice the figures representing native Egyptians are a deep reddish or mahogany brown, intermediate in color between the lighter tan peoples of Mediterranean North Africa and the Middle East on the one hand and the nearly ebony-dark Kushites from Sudanese Nubia on the other. I would say the Egyptian figures in that sequence most closely resemble some of the dark-skinned people living in Upper Egypt and northern Sudan today (see this photo of a Egyptian schoolteacher from Luxor, for example), as well as maybe some inhabitants of the larger Northeast African region.
Of course, the color schemes in ancient Egyptian art aren't always realistic and often have symbolism we can only guess at. But, assuming the purpose of the "Table of Nations" sequence is to compare the Egyptians with other people, it seems reasonable to me that the Egyptian figures are meant to represent their population's "median" skin tone or at least how they perceived the median to be.
So, yes, if we were to see many if not most ancient Egyptians today, I do think we would consider them "Black African", at least in the sense of being dark-skinned and native to Africa. They may have not been the exact same kind of "Black African" as the majority of Nigerians or Zambians, but again, "Blackness" has always been a social construct. Remember how 19th century Europeans would apply the word to characterize Indian, Melanesian, and Aboriginal Australian people as well as Africans.
With that said, Egypt would always have benefited from its position within a fertile river valley that linked the African interior with the Mediterranean basin, and I'm sure as its civilization's power and influence expanded over the centuries, it would have attracted immigrants from all directions in addition to the well-documented series of invasions that the region experienced later in time (although none of these invasions would have wiped out and replaced the locals). The people in Egypt today most likely have a heritage that has been diverse for a long time, even if most of them speak Arabic and observe Islam or Christianity as a result of linguistic and cultural shifts.
Unfortunately, it's my understanding that our sample size for ancient Egyptian genetic data is small at the moment and may not be representative of the whole population across time and space. I do know a guy with a background in genetics who has used some genetic software on his computer to analyze some of these genetic samples, including one from predynastic Upper Egypt (link here if you don't mind the technical language he uses). He found many of them would have had quite dark skin in life, and that the predynastic sample's ancestry was almost evenly split between that related to "sub-Saharan" Africans on the one hand and that related to western Eurasian people on the other. Given Egypt may have been the exit point for the original "Out of Africa" migrations, I think it's possible that even the latter type of ancestry could still be African in origin, albeit related to the subset of Africans that left the continent for Eurasia.
So, there, that's what I wanted to get out on this topic as someone who's been an Egyptology fan since we studied ancient Egypt in second grade. I do not like debating people on this topic since I find arguing on the Internet unproductive as well as a severe emotional trigger for my autistic brain. But I hope some like-minded people will appreciate what I have to say at least.
P.S. Ancient Kush is also a cool civilization, as are the many others across pre-colonial Africa. It's not like people of Black African descent need to claim Egypt to validate their heritage.
Primal Defender
Looking at the work of comic book art legend John Buscema made me want to emulate his rendering style, hence the use of black ink for the shading in this drawing. It ended up not looking that much like Buscema's work, but oh well, most of us can only do so much to emulate the greats. If you're wondering why this character's hair looks blue, that's how Buscema and other artists of his generation often colored the highlights in black hair.
While listening to Sierra Nelson's awesome recent cover for "You Can't Take Me" from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, the lyrics somehow reminded me of the dinosaurs breaking out of their enclosures in Jurassic Park. I know it's a suggestion a bit out of left field, but someone in the YouTube singer community needs to do a "villain cover" of that song with a Jurassic Park theme.
