As if Pokemonathon wasn't enough, I've decided to get myself into yet another art marathon challenge. This one is called Alphabestiary, and basically what happens is every two weeks the community posts a mythological creature and then... you draw it. There will be one for every letter of the alphabet, and so this is the creature for the letter A - an Angha.

The Angha is a composite creature from Persia, it has the head and body of a dog, the tail and wings of a peacock, and the paws of a lion. It was supposed to be a huge, motherly creature, always female and very nurturing. Now, as all of you guys probably know, it is only the male peacock that has those fancy tail feathers. However, I stuck them on my Angha as well because the idea of having "real eyes" instead of eyespots was way too tempting. I kept thinking about that weird saying "mothers have eyes on the backs of their heads" as I was making this... how creepy would it be to have this thing watching you from all angles?

I also went with a more fox-like face, for no reason in particular really. I just had been looking at Fennec Foxes the day before I started this and decided to go for it. And hey, I think it looks pretty good!

Anyway, if any of you are interested in joining (which I hope some of you are!) you can check out the community here: http://alphabeastiary.blogspot.com/ I figure all of my submissions for this will be traditional, and all my Pokemonathon submissions will be digital, and that way I can keep up to date in all the ways I like to make art. It felt really nice to bust out a creature in traditional media... it's been far too long!