101 in 1001: Creatures, Aliens, Military Officers, and More

Monotropa In Spore Space

I completed another 101 in 1001 goal recently, whilst doing something I love.

• 032. Finish 10 digital paintings

You can view the previous paintings here. This is the last six, starting with the picture above, 'Monotropa In Spore Space'. It was inspired by the plant Monotropa uniflora, commonly known as ghost pipes. They have pure white stems, each with a single flower. The blooms themselves are sometimes white like the stems, but are often tinged with hues of another colour/other colours as well. They're also parasitic and rely completely on their hosts.

Eske

The next one I completed was a character design for someone in a story/graphic novel that I'm working on at the moment. His name is Eske and he is employed by the military in the nation in which he currently resides (he's originally from somewhere else).

Morning Ritual/Midnight Mass: Mary

Following Eske, I finished the digital painting 'Mary', which is part of a series called Morning Ritual/Midnight Mass. There are two distinct sets of images which will go together to make two larger pieces at the end.

Architeuthis

Next came 'Architeuthis', inspired by the golden Giant Squid, Architeuthis dux. Most of the character designs I do are in black and white now, but 'Architeuthis' definitely needed his colours!

Miseria And The Familiar Shape

My space princess friend Miseria was the lovely "muse" for my next drawing. Green, purple and black are colours that they often wear, so that became the colour scheme for them. And also, I just wanted to draw a magic moon jellyfish made of stars, so that happened too!

The Paracosmonaut

Lastly, 'The Paracosmonaut', a combination of "paracosm" and "cosmonaut".  I had intended to finish the next Morning Ritual/Midnight Mass digital painting, but this one played like a little film in my head, my brain took a "screenshot" of it and made it into a picture. This could have been called "Parastronaut" or something similar, but a) it doesn't work as well and b) in the little "film" there was definitely a Russian cosmonaut. 

Fun facts: A cosmonaut is different to other astronauts because they are trained by and part of Roscosmos (Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities) in Russia, as opposed to the space organisations of other countries. The space agencies of other countries have different requirements for the amount of flight experience time acquired and, for example, the age/height restrictions differ from  those of other nations as well.

A with that, the goal is complete!