Once I had a big thread of my own here where I would post my artwork attached with descriptive commentary, but I deleted that thread about a year ago when I was in an infuriated mood. Now I want to get it started again, but this time with links to online venues where you can purchase your own printed copies.
This is a small educational poster (or mini-poster, if you prefer) describing an Upper Paleolithic culture uncovered in the Xianrendong Cave of southeastern China. This culture is remarkable for having produced some of the oldest pottery ever recovered by archaeologists, attesting to a hunter-gatherer culture that had begun to settle down in villages well over ten thousand years before the development of agriculture. On the right side of the poster is a speculative reconstruction of how the people of prehistoric Xianrendong may have looked.
A wary knight-like warrior keeps an eye on the border of her ancient savanna kingdom (as demarcated by the obelisk in the background) from the back of her elephant.
You might notice that the elephant’s tusks here have artistically embellished curvature to resemble those on extinct mammoths. It IS fantasy art after all.
Here’s a brawl between two different cultures’ interpretations of the mythical human-headed feline known as the sphinx. The one to the left is the Egyptian species we all know and love, whereas the other is a younger, winged variation depicted in the artwork of Mesopotamian, Persian, and other Middle Eastern cultures. I gave the latter sphinx a tiger’s body because I felt that would set it apart as distinctively “Asiatic” compared to the lion-based African version.
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And here's some stuff that sticks to the North African theme of ES:
These would be a couple of Kemetic (aka “ancient Egyptian”) citizens attired with more modern, hip-hop-influenced getup. It’s quite fun mixing ancient Egyptian and contemporary hip-hop culture for artwork like this.
This is a Moorish warrior woman I drew following the release of the recent "Aladdin" reboot. Originally, the Moors (or Mauri) were an African people occupying an area within the territories of modern Morocco and Algeria. Later in history, Europeans would use the term “Moorish” as synonymous with darker-skinned people in general (hence the word “blackamoor”), Muslims of any ethnicity, or the succession of Islamic dynasties which took over and dominated most of Spain during the Middle Ages.
Dihya al-Kahina, the warrior queen of the Zenata people, is defending her kingdom in the region of Numidia (now northern Algeria) against Islamic Arab invaders in the later 7th century AD. Her people, like the other tribes of Numidia, are every bit as proficient on horseback as the Arabs are on their dromedary camels.
And this would be a T-shirt design starring Hatshepsut, who was perhaps the mightiest of Egypt’s female pharaohs. You could say she was Queenin’ before it was cool!
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Apidima 1 is the first of two specimens of hominin skull material recovered in a cave in southeastern Greece in the 1970s, the other being labeled Apidima 2. A recent analysis determined that, while the fragments of Apidima 2’s skull could comfortably be identified as that of a Neanderthal who lived 170,000 years ago, those of Apidima 1 shows features more characteristic of modern humans (Homo sapiens)—despite actually having lived in the region at least forty thousand years before Apidima 2. Which is to say, Apidima 1 may show that a population of modern humans had already colonized southeastern Europe from Africa by 210,000 years ago. In fact, Apidima 1 may be the oldest Homo sapiens specimen found outside the African cradle.
This notwithstanding, the people represented by Apidima 1 appear to represent another “dead end” in the annals of human evolution. All humans living outside of Africa, modern Greeks included, owe the vast majority of their ancestry to a later migration from the continent between 70-50,000 years ago.
Since the fragments of bone belonging to Apidima 1 all came from the back of its skull, its sex has yet to be identified. But given my weakness for drawing pretty women, of course I had to reconstruct it as female!
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Some more recent favorites of mine... Titanis walleri, the last of the terror birds, has shown the saber-toothed cat Xenosmilus hodsonae who really reigns at the top of the food chain in Florida circa 1.8 million years ago.
The prehistoric terror birds, more properly known as the phorusrhacids, were a family of giant, flightless, and carnivorous cousins of the modern seriema that thrived between 62 and 1.8 million years ago. Most of them would have been endemic to South America, but Titanis is one example that has been found as far north as Texas and Florida. You could say that these big killer birds were among the last of the big predatory theropods.
68 million years ago in the jungles of late Cretaceous North America, a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex battles its arch-nemesis (and favorite prey) Triceratops horridus. From the cover of some nearby undergrowth, a small troodontid dinosaur watches with the expectation that whomever wins, the loser will become carrion to feast on.
The Kentake (Queen) of Kush goes on a ride across the Sudanese desert atop her royal elephant. Ever since I found out that the ancient Kushites may have trained and ridden war elephants (as suggested by the discovery of a possible elephant stable at the Kushite archaeological site of Musawwart es-Sufta), I’ve fancied the mental image of Kushite rulers going about on their own royal elephants. Considering that African bush elephants are larger than the Indian elephants used by the Asian and Middle Eastern civilizations, they must have ranked among the most fearsome mounted units ever fielded by an ancient army!
In Greek mythology, Andromeda was a princess of Aethiopia (which at the time usually referred, not to the region of modern Ethiopia, but to the kingdom of Kush in what is now northern Sudan) whom, according to her boastful mother Queen Cassiopeia, was more beautiful than the Nereid sea nymphs who accompanied Poseidon. To punish the queen for her hubris, the sea god sent the monster Cetus to terrorize the Aethiopian coast. Only by sacrificing Andromeda to Cetus’s appetite could the Aethiopians enjoy respite.
Thankfully for Andromeda, the Greek demigod Perseus came over to slay the monster the moment she was about to be eaten. Afterward Perseus and Andromeda married, had seven sons and two daughters, and founded the city-state of Mycenae.
For this portrayal, I based Cetus’s appearance on the Livyatan melvelli, a cousin of the modern sperm whale which prowled the seas during the Miocene epoch between 10 and 9 million years ago. Since the name of Cetus is related to our modern word “cetacean”, I figured a whale would make the most logical base for his design.
By the way, this is not the first time I have drawn Andromeda. Her story has actually fascinated me as an artist for quite some time. However, since my art style has evolved so much since I last depicted her, I felt obliged to redraw her anyway.
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Travel back to a primeval era when dinosaurs ruled the earth and humanity was only getting started…not to mention getting funky. Welcome to the Soul Age!
I hatched the concept for this after realizing that the age of blaxploitation films overlaps with that of various prehistoric fantasy and sci-fi films (e.g. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Planet of Dinosaurs). What if somebody back in the 1970s had combined the two genres and make a prehistoric blaxploitation movie with Ray Harryhausen-style dinosaurs and foxy cavegirls with Afros? I’d certainly watch that!
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I remember posting this in the now-deleted thread, but allow me to post it again. This is an educational poster I created to show the evolution of modern Western and Middle Eastern alphabets. It starts with the prehistoric African rock art traditions that would form the foundation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (with perhaps some additional inspiration from Sumerian cuneiform) and then shows derivative forms such as proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic (among others). It’s by no means a complete collection of all the scripts that evolved from these foundations, nor does it include alphabets from other literary traditions (e.g. Indian, East Asian, or Mesoamerican ones). Nonetheless, it should go to demonstrate the multicultural, transcontinental heritage of the modern English alphabet we use today.
Buy your own printed copy on Redbubble here.
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I did these three sketches while on vacation in Washington, D.C., since one of our distant cousins was getting married. It was a disappointing ceremony, to be honest, since the food they served afterward was really bad (despite it being served at a “fancy” venue) and only the bride and groom got to have even one bite of their cake. On the upside, I did get to visit both the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture as well as their Natural History Museum, both of which were real treasure troves of photogenic exhibits.
Going in a clockwise direction, the subjects of each sketch are:
1) A Tyrannosaurus rex, with a speculative “ridge” of jagged scales on its forelimbs inspired by those of some crocodiles today.
2) A “prehistoric fantasy” warrior heroine clad with strips of dinosaur hide.
3) A female Egyptian Pharaoh wearing the traditional blue crown of war (or khepresh).
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There are few outfits that would benefit a heroine of the prehistoric jungle more than the dinosaur-hide bikini. The tough and scaly hide grants the wearer protective armor where it matters the most, yet the bikini form provides the perfect comfort for hot and humid Cretaceous conditions. Not to mention, it allows her to show off her figure!
(Of course, this would be a shaded version of one of those sketches I did on my recent vacation.)
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Some more old favorites... A pack of dromaeosaurids rushes through the Cretaceous jungle on the hunt for their next meal. Dromaeosaurids, better known as “raptors”, are the family of meat-eating dinosaurs that includes the famous Velociraptor and Deinonychus. They are recognizable for the enlarged sickle-shaped talons on their hind feet, which the raptors may have used to puncture prey while pinning it down and savaging it with their teeth and foreclaws. And, as members of the theropod subgroup known as the maniraptorans, most if not all of them would have been feathered!
66 million years ago in South America, at the very end of the Cretaceous Period, a pair of titanosaurian sauropods look up from the jungle canopy to witness the biggest shooting star they have ever witnessed. Little can they fathom that the verdant paradise they call home is about to be lost in the upcoming catastrophe.
The dinosaurs here are based on the Dreadnoughtus schrani, a South American titanosaur from the Late Cretaceous that may have been the heaviest dinosaur yet discovered. Its maximum weight would have been around 42 tons.
The king of the savanna has met his match in this contest of leonine brawn and ferocity against human cunning and agility!
In other words, I wanted to channel my inner Edgar Rice Burroughs by drawing a chick wrestling a lion. It’s the sort of simple, yet timeless and high-concept theme that is just plain fun to illustrate.
The Kentake of Kush delivers an accolade to one of her finest soldiers, as represented by her tapping a sword onto his shoulder. Think of it as her way of knighting him.
You might recognize this as being based on the classic painting “The Accolade” by the British artist Edmund Leighton, which had a medieval European queen knighting one of her soldiers. What I wanted to do here was to take a classic piece of European artwork and put an African spin on its theme.
Back in the earliest days of the human species, the rainy season is about to descend upon the plains of Africa. Within a sacred circle of megaliths, this tribal priestess is performing a rite to placate the capricious deity of lightning and thunder.
Credit for this artwork’s inspiration goes to the music track “Thundertribe” by the pseudonymous artist "Paleowolf", whose specialty is making music based on prehistoric times.
Cleopatra VII, the last Queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, prepares for an upcoming war by striping and spotting her face with ritual paint. Maybe what she’s gearing up for is the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, where her fleet and that of Mark Antony will clash with Octavian’s.
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This illustration depicts the specimen of early Homo sapiens known as Apidima 1, a fragment of whose skull was found in a cave in southern Greece and dated to 210,000 years ago. This would make this individual the oldest discovered example of Homo sapiens found outside Africa, although they probably represented a dead-end lineage rather than an ancestor for any people living today.
Positioned to the right of Apidima 1 herself are two of the species with whom she might have coexisted in the scrubby chaparral of Pleistocene Greece. They are the extinct European straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and the still-thriving golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos).
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This is my depiction of a male specimen of the recently discovered, enigmatic hominin species from eastern Asia known as the Denisovans. Known only from fragmentary remains from which DNA has been extracted, they appear to have been most closely related to the contemporaneous Neanderthals, sharing their European cousins’ tendency towards a heavily built anatomy compared to modern Homo sapiens. However, the genetic data so far also indicates that Denisovans may have been darker-skinned than the Neanderthals as well as better adapted to the low-oxygen conditions of higher altitudes (like one might find in the Himalaya Mountains, for instance).
Although the Denisovans for the most part have joined their Neanderthal brethren in going extinct, they did leave a small imprint (between 1-6%) on the genetic ancestry of modern humans of East Asian, Melanesian, and Aboriginal Australian heritage.
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For those of you who use Clip Studio Paint for digital art like I do, I made a new downloadable color set for human skin, hair, and eye colors.
This to-be-colored sketch depicts a little-known personage from imperial Chinese history, namely a woman named Li who would give birth to the Jin Dynasty Emperor Xiao Wuwen (373-397 AD). According to the official chronicle "History of the Jin", she got her start as a concubine and and weaver whose colleagues had showered her with abuse for her being "tall and black" as well as a "kunlun" (the Chinese word for darker-skinned foreigners). Thankfully, this would ultimately play out as a classic Cinderella story for Li, since she found herself nominated as the Empress (consort?), with the imperial administration addressing her as "precious" to counteract the insults thrown at her.
I don't think anyone knows for sure what Li's ethnic heritage would have been, assuming she was a real person to begin with. The Chinese often used the word "kunlun" for African people, but in other cases it could apply to Negrito or even "Mongoloid" Southeast Asians (e.g. Cambodians, Vietnamese, or Malays). Since neither of those latter ethnic groups are known for their tall stature like Li herself, however, I chose to go with an African interpretation for my portrayal of her.
By the way, the phrase Li is saying is supposed to be Chinese for "Haters gonna hate!"
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Got her colored now... This is my depiction of a little-known personage from the annals of imperial Chinese history, namely a woman named Li who was the mother of the Emperor Xiao Wuwen (373-397 AD, during the Jin Dynasty). According to the official chronicle “History of the Jin”, Li got her start as a concubine and and weaver whose colleagues had showered her with abuse for her being “tall and black” as well as a “kunlun” (the Chinese word for darker-skinned foreigners). Thankfully, this would ultimately play out like a classic Cinderella story for Li, since she found herself nominated as Empress (as in imperial consort) out of all the concubines.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure what Li’s ethnic heritage would have been, assuming she was a real person to begin with. The Chinese often used the word “kunlun” for African people, but in other cases it could apply to Negrito, Indian, or even “Mongoloid” Southeast Asians (e.g. Cambodians, Vietnamese, or Malays). Since none of those other ethnic groups are known for having distinctly tall stature like Li, however, I chose to go with an African interpretation for my portrayal of her.
By the way, the phrase Li is saying is supposed to be Mandarin Chinese for “Haters gonna hate!” Go show those catty concubines, my Empress!
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It's a brisk and misty morning in the Late Cretaceous Period, and this Albertosaurus is ready to revive its energy supply with the flesh of an Arrhinoceratops it has brought down.
Albertosaurus sarcophagus, which hunted in North America between 71 and 68 million years ago, would have been a smaller and nimbler cousin of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, as both were members of the predatory dinosaur family Tyrannosauridae. Coincidentally enough, the Arrhinoceratops brachyops it is about to devour here also had a close affiliation with another, also much larger celebrity among the Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, namely the chasmosaurine ceratopsian Triceratops.
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It’s a duel of the demigods that puts Achilles, the famous Greek champion, against King Memnon of Aethiopia (which at the time referred to the territory of modern Sudan rather than what we call Ethiopia today). Both of these characters appear in Homer’s literary universe centered around the Trojan War, with Memnon and his Aethiopian army aiding the Trojan cause against the Greeks. They even go man-on-man together as depicted here. Although it is said that Achilles’s father Zeus (yes, that Zeus) respected both fighters to equal degrees and was biased towards neither one of them, the scales of fate told him to give the victory to his son by having him stab Memnon through the heart. Later accounts would claim that the temple of Asclepius in Nicomeda would keep Memnon’s sword contained within, while his body was either cremated or returned to his native Aethiopia for burial.
Although most historians imagine the Trojan War to have taken place between 1260 and 1180 BC during the Mycenaean Period (if it happened at all), I wasn’t aiming for perfect historical accuracy for either of these characters’ costume designs. They are mythical beings after all. That’s why, for example, Achilles is wearing armor more like those of Greek soldiers from the Classical period (510-323 BC) than what their Mycenaean ancestors would have used.
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This one is over a year old, but I am still rather proud of it as a premise...
About twenty-six centuries before Columbus will sail the ocean blue, these Egyptian emissaries are paying their respects to a Mesoamerican king after a long voyage across the Atlantic. While the native ruler offers his guests a cup of chocolate beverage, his mischievous daughter is eager to indulge her curiosity by touching one of the visitors’ hair…much to the Egyptian woman's consternation, of course.
This is, of course, a fictional “alternate history” scenario. There have been some “Afrocentric” scholars such as Ivan Van Sertima arguing that the Egyptians or other Africans may have sailed across the Atlantic and made contact with early Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Olmecs, but most scholars consider this to be an unsubstantiated fringe hypothesis. Nonetheless, it would make for some appealing fiction.
By the way, if the Mesoamericans in this scene appear strangely large compared to the Egyptians, that’s because the Maya art style I referenced for this seems to have a lot of chunky characters with big heads.
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In other news, I now have a signature banner for my posts here (and on several other online forums)! Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is an illustration I'm working in for a short (as in, having a 5k word count and three scenes) pseudo-historical fantasy story, which has the working title "Dribble Like Me". It's a tale of international diplomacy gone haywire through cultural misunderstanding and microaggressions, and the only resolution is a ball game---as in, an ancient Mesoamerican-style ball game where the loser gets put to death!
The female character to the left is my protagonist Neith-Ka, the princess of an Egyptian-style civilization traveling overseas, whereas the two dudes below here are locals whose culture is based on that of the pre-Columbian Maya city states. The latter are supposed to be wearing helmets made from the hair of a rainforest-dwelling bison which is native to the story's fictional world. Neith-Ka, on the other hand, has a headwrap on to protect her braids during the sport.
I really need to fill in all that negative space in the upper right corner with some more Maya-looking buildings, but Mesoamerican pyramid-temples are more difficult to draw than you'd think if you want to get the perspective right.
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Link Here's another work-in-progress illustration for another (also work-in-progress) short story of mine. This one would set in our modern-day Earth and would be more of a spy thriller than my usual fantasy or historical fiction tales...albeit with a heavy dose of lost-world adventure poured into its mix.
To sum it up in a few words, the two protagonists are a husband-and-wife team of FBI agents investigating intensified police brutality by the LAPD, following the fatal shooting of the female lead's younger brother. This leads them to an island in the equatorial Pacific where the LAPD Chief has established his winter getaway, but unfortunately for them, the island gets its name for its endemic population of predatory pelycosaurs and other survivors from the Permian period (298-253 mya). And then there's the crooked cop's own hired goons...
In case you're curious, the male lead (left) is an Hawaiian/Palestinian-American mix, the female lead (right) is African-American, and the main antagonist (not pictured) is an Arab immigrant from Casablanca, Morocco who likes to surround himself with the "Moorish" architecture of his homeland (hence his styling himself as a "Sultan of Finback Isle").
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This is an illustration I did for a short pseudo-historical fantasy story I completed in late August of 2019, which I have titled Dribble Like Me. It's a tale of international diplomacy gone haywire through cultural misunderstanding and microaggressions, and the only resolution is a ball game. As in, an ancient Mesoamerican-style ball game where the loser must be put to death!
The female character positioned to the left of this composition is Neith-Ka, the princess of Khamit (based on ancient Egypt), who is visiting the citystate of Mutul in the overseas country of Mayab (based on the pre-Columbian Maya, of course). The two Mayaban men to the right are her opponents in the game, and they're wearing helmets made from the hair of a rainforest-dwelling bison endemic to their land. Neith-Ka herself has a headwrap to protect her braids during the game.
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Neither the combined perils presented by a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex, an erupting skull-faced volcano, and a giant predatory pterosaur can discourage our heroine from rescuing her loyal gorilla ally!
This is an “alternative version” of a commission I did for my DeviantArt follower Chickfighter. In the original version I did for them, the character was a blonde-haired woman of European descent in a white bikini, and it was a saber-toothed cat that the pterosaur was carrying off. Regardless I liked the basic setup of the scene so much that (with my commissioner’s approval) I did this second version with a few design tweaks for my own personal usage.
Meet Neith-Ka, who is the protagonist of my short story “Dribble Like Me” (as yet completed but not ready to be published for public readership). She’s the athletic, feisty, and somewhat pampered princess of Khamit, a civilization based on ancient Egypt in the story’s pseudo-historical world. She travels over to the citystate of Mutul in Mayab (based on the pre-Columbian Maya) to seal a trade deal, but a cultural misunderstanding between her and her hosts leads to a diplomatic altercation that will have to be resolved with a ball game. Namely, the Mesoamerican-style of ball game wherein you shoot a rubber ball through a vertical hoop without your palms or toes, and where the loser gets put to death.
Oh, and Neith-Ka does not like foreigners touching her braids without permission. It’s not that she’s uncommonly touchy, though. You’d feel very much the same way if you had to put up with unsolicited hair molestation all the time when visiting other cultures.
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These two queens (one a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus and the other Homo sapiens) come from deep in the past of the Egyptian Nile basin, albeit from very different time periods. Together, they're spending the twilight stargazing by the great African river that defines their shared kingdom.
I wonder if the Egyptian human queen believes her Spinosaurus companion has any ties to the crocodile god Sobek?
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And now to advertise my Redbubble page again (using of the photo templates the site provides for artists to promote their work)...
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Having broken off from the rest of the world two hundred and sixty million years ago, the landmass known as Finback Isle has protected a unique ecosystem in the equatorial Pacific since long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Only a near-extinct nation of Polynesian settlers, along with the crew of Ferdinand Magellan, have ever set foot on the island within the annals of human history.
And then Ibrahim Fawal, the controversial new Chief of Police in Los Angeles, decided to establish his secret winter getaway there.
Enter our heroes Abdullah and Monique Kalua, a daring husband-and-wife team of FBI agents sent to investigate the LAPD’s accelerated record of corruption and brutality, including the shooting of Monique’s own younger brother and brother-in-law. Their mission is to penetrate Fawal’s private Moroccan-style lair on the island and bring him to justice.
Not only must they brave treacherous ruin-studded jungle teeming with beasts older than the dinosaurs themselves, but they will have to contend with the armed officers of one of the vilest men ever to head the police of LA…the Sultan of Finback Isle!
###
This is a book cover I designed for a novelette I recently finished writing, which I would describe as a hybrid between a spy thriller and a lost-world adventure. It’s a tale of heroic FBI agents, crooked cops, Moroccan warriors, and savage beasts from the Permian amidst Polynesian ruins. Once I have it all edited and polished, I’ll be selling it for Amazon Kindle!
(By the way, the two characters in the cover illustration, from left to right, are Abdullah and Monique Kalua, the story’s two FBI protagonists. Abdullah is a Hawaiian/Palestinian mix and his wife Monique is African-American. The titular main antagonist, Ibrahim Fawal, is of Moroccan Arab heritage, and he’s probably in that little LAPD copter towards the upper left.)
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On the snow-swept prairie of North America between fifteen and eleven thousand years ago, one of the earliest Americans sticks a spear shaft into that pool of mucky black liquid near his encampment. Whatever he’s thinking when he’s doing it, he ought to pay more attention to his immediate surroundings. There could be a Smilodon stalking him!
This scene was originally going to take place somewhere in what is now the Los Angeles area of California, with the guy being based on historic Native peoples of California like the Tongva and the asphalt pit representing one of those at La Brea. Later on, I decided I wanted a more quintessentially “ice age” backdrop with lots of snow and ice and maybe some woolly mammoths and bison in the background, so I switched the setting to somewhere in the northern Great Plains. Maybe they’re somewhere near the petroleum reserves of central Canada?
Additionally, I’ve always wanted to juxtapose Native Americans like those from the iconic Plains cultures (e.g. the Lakota, Cheyenne, Comanche, etc.) with Pleistocene megafauna like the mammoths and sabertooths. People forget that the human hunter-gatherers who would have settled among these animals wouldn’t have all looked like stereotypical cavemen in simple fur togas or loincloth. Some of them might have looked like the foraging groups known today or recorded in historical times.
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A rogue bull elephant, driven crazy by musth and the pain of a broken tusk, has terrorized the prehistoric savanna for long enough. Our heroine is ready to put the beast out of its rampaging misery with the obsidian point of her broken spear!
(If you don’t know what musth is, it’s a moment male elephants go through on a seasonal basis that causes them to secrete a black fluid from behind their eyes. It also makes their moods much more volatile and dangerous than usual.)
I drew this as a birthday gift for one of my artist friends (his gallery is here) who shares my fondness for sexy dark-skinned warrior babes. His character designs tend to have more trappings of science fiction, superhero comics, or anime-esque fantasy than mine do, but he has drawn a few tribal or barbarian fantasy heroines as well. It’s those latter that inspired this scene most of all.
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It's a cold winter night between eleven and fifteen thousand years ago on the plains of North America. One of the earliest ancestors of the Native Americans is so absorbed in gathering sticky liquid asphalt for use as glue that he doesn't notice the hungry Smilodon fatalis stalking him to his right.
At least our human protagonist might be able to escape this one if he's able to kick or shove the saber-toothed cat into the asphalt pit (or "tar pit" as they're commonly misnamed).
This is a scene that underwent a lot of revision from its initial conception. It started off being set in the Los Angeles area of California, with the asphalt pit representing its infamous La Brea pits, but then I decided I wanted a more iconic "ice age" environment with lots of snow along with woolly mammoths together with the bison and sabertooth. This is why I moved the scene to somewhere in the northern Great Plains, possibly near the rich petroleum reserves of central Canada. The third, digital draft of the work required me to change the Native man's costume and his encampment to look somewhat less like a stereotypical 19th century Plains Native sleeping in a tipi (as I was informed that tipis were only introduced in the Americas after Columbus).
Overall, I think the work has improved a lot over its transition from pencil draft to digital reworking.
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With this sketch, I set out to design a dinosaur-hunting heroine who was cast from a somewhat different mold than the usual tribal chick in a hide bikini. Don’t get me wrong, I like that old archetype too, but this time I wanted someone whose design evoked more of a specific African cultural heritage. In this case, most of the influence came from brass plaques from the West African kingdom of Benin (bizarrely enough, this was located in what’s now western Nigeria rather than the modern nation called Benin, which on the other hand is coextensive with a separate kingdom in the region called Dahomey). Old Benin’s capital, known for earthen ramparts containing more material than Khufu’s Great Pyramid in Egypt, was also the inspiration for the big walled settlement behind.
I am pretty sure I drew her pet Velociraptor’s legs way too short, but that can be fixed in the (probably inevitable) digital makeover.
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72 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, a pair of Kamuysaurus japonicus enjoy the warm and sunny weather alongside the beach of what will someday be known as Japan. Kamuysaurus was a Japanese member of the hadrosaurid dinosaur family, the so-called “duckbills”, and its fossil remains were found in what were once marine sediments (that is, originally laid under the sea). The paper describing it suggested that it and its relatives would have preferred coastal environments in general, hence why I have chosen to depict this dinosaur alongside a beach.
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This little family represents a Neolithic culture of West Africa called the Kintampo Complex, which occupied most of the territory of what is now Ghana between 2500 and 1400 BC. Living in villages of wattle-and-daub houses (sometimes built on stone foundations), these ancient Ghanaians would have subsisted on crops such as pearl millet, yams, and oil palm, as well as keeping livestock such as cattle and goats. However, they had yet to adopt the metalworking technology that their contemporaries elsewhere in West Africa had begun to develop, so they would have still used stone for making tools and jewelry.
A lot of artistic guesswork went into this illustration since I had more written descriptions than photos of the Kintampo people's material culture to go on. I did read that they would have possessed cigar-shaped rasps for beating barkcloth, so that is why they're wearing barkcloth clothes here. As for the young son wielding miniature weapons to the left, he's supposed to be playing soldier like little boys around the world cultures like to do.
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An Egyptian traveler visiting a village in West Africa circa 3000 BC wants to know what’s up with that grayish metal called “iron” they’ve been smelting and forging into tools.
To be fair, the ancient Egyptians would sometimes make beads and even daggers out of iron mined from meteorites (they called it the “metal of heaven” for that reason), but it wasn’t until the 6th century BC when they started smelting the stuff for themselves. Another hotspot of ironworking in the Nile basin was in the Kushite city of Meroe, which had become the kingdom’s capital after 590 BC. I am honestly not yet sure why neither of these civilizations had picked up the technology earlier if it had been a thing further west in Africa for far longer.
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Here's a colored version of the above cartoon. Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a little nostalgic fan art I did for the game Empire Earth, an old real-time strategy title which came out back in 2001. Designed by Rick Goodman, one of the guys behind the original Age of Empires, Empire Earth extended the concept of “advancing through the ages” to cover the entirety of human history, starting in prehistoric times (around 500,000 years ago, to be more exact) and ending sometime in the distant future. It also boasted an in-game “civilization editor” which allowed you to create your own civilizations, in addition to the map and campaign editor which were standard features for RTS games of that era. Although Empire Earth enjoyed enough success to spawn two sequels, it seems to have faded into historical obscurity relative to longer-standing series like Age of Empires or Warcraft.
Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun playing as a prehistoric tribe in the original Empire Earth, especially since the prehistoric stages had more gameplay depth to them than their equivalent in the first Age of Empires game. I also appreciated the cultural diversity added in the second despite it being over-laden with new bells and whistles (the third game, alas, was too broken and buggy to have much redeeming value). I’d love to see a remaster for Empire Earth with the epic chronological scope of the first game and the diversity of the second.
This clubman here would be based on the first game’s clubman available in the prehistoric age. However, he is Africanized in phenotype relative to his pasty-white game counterpart since the hominin lineage leading to modern humans (Homo sapiens) would still have been living in Africa 500,000 years ago.
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A professional huntress, accompanied by her loyal Velociraptor, scans the jungle outside the towering walls of her native city for signs of game.
This is a design for a different kind of dinosaur-hunting character, one based more on the rich history and diverse cultural heritages of tropical West Africa than on the stock tribal chick in a leopard-skin bikini (though, don't get me wrong, I like that second archetype as well). I drew most of the inspiration for this character's look from brass plaques from the medieval kingdom of Benin in what is now southwestern Nigeria (ironically enough, the modern nation called Benin is based not on this but rather a separate nation called Dahomey further to the West). Old Benin's capital, Edo, is also known for earthen ramparts containing more material than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, hence the basis for the big walls in the background here.
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This Egyptian tomb guard doesn't seem too pleased to see you, and neither does her pet hyena.
I took an old sketch that had been sitting in my sketchbook for at least a couple of months and transformed it into this pair, also harkening back to a rudimentary concept for an Egyptian tomb guard character I hatched back in early 2017. The helmet she's wearing is of course based on the Egyptian jackal god of the dead called Anpu, or Anubis as he is known to Westerners.
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Amanirenas, the famous warrior queen of classical-era Kush, faces off against a Roman legionary in her war against the (newly rechristened) Empire between 27 and 22 BC. It would have been quite a bloody and devastating affair for both sides of the conflict. The Kushites started with a successful attack upon Syene and Philae in the south of Roman-controlled Egypt, but the Romans retaliated with enough force that they managed to sack Napata, the second of Kush’s three historic capitals (its first and third being Kerma and Meroe, respectively).
After this particular war ended, the Roman and Kushite civilizations would not clash that often anymore. The peace treaty between the two powers in 21 or 20 BC conceded most of the Roman territorial gains during the earlier war back to Kush, and the Kushites received an exemption from taxation to Rome. From that point on, the Roman Empire and the kingdom of Kush would enjoy a relatively peaceful coexistence next to one another until the latter declined as a power after 300 AD.
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These are warriors of the people known as ancient Libyans, who were not a unified nation but rather a collection of nomadic, pastoral tribes living west of Egypt during pharaonic times. Some of these groups would have clung to the Mediterranean scrubland along Libya’s northern coast whereas others may have eked their existence out in the Sahara Desert and beside its oases.
You may have noticed that I’ve given these two Libyan warriors different skin colors, even though they are supposed to be tribal compatriots. That’s because Egyptian depictions of their Libyan neighbors give them different skin colors too. Sometimes Libyans in Egyptian art are colored light yellow-brown like the peoples of western Asia (aka the “Middle East”), whereas other times they are painted much darker brown, more like the native Egyptians themselves.
I interpret this as showing physical variability among the disparate peoples of Libya during this period, with some of them having received more gene flow from Europe or West Asia (which would have lightened their skin on average) whereas others kept the darker skin of their indigenous African ancestors. I suspect the former would have been more common along the Mediterranean coast, since it would have been more accessible to migrants from outside of Africa, whereas the latter were more common deeper within the desert. At least that is what makes the most sense to me.
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This would be my artistic interpretation of the myth of Saint George rescuing a princess from sacrifice to a dragon. Although St. George has become the patron saint of England, he didn’t start out as the medieval knight of popular imagination. Instead he was a Roman soldier named Georgius from the province of Cappadocia, in what is now Turkey. Furthermore, his episode with the dragon and the princess took place in “Libya”, which referred to the entire continent of Africa back in antiquity. In some versions of the myth, the princess helps by offering the girdle around her clothes as a leash to capture the beast around the neck.
Also, dragons in older traditions were portrayed as resembling giant snakes rather than the more lizard- or dinosaur-like creatures we imagine nowadays. That’s why this dragon looks rather like an oversized python.
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It is North America during the Late Cretaceous, circa 67 million years ago. Bolts of lightning shoot from the ash plume of an erupting volcano, and a Tyrannosaurus rex deep within the jungle answers the crack of their thunder with a deafening roar of its own.
What could be more awesome than a scene of a roaring tyrannosaur? Why, a scene of a roaring tyrannosaur with lightning in the sky and a volcano erupting in the distance, that's what!
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This would be a simple landscape drawing showing an environmental boundary (aka ecotone) between open, seasonally dry savanna and the wetter, more humid depths of the rainforest. I suspect the transition between these two biomes would be more gradual in real life (i.e. you would start with more clumps of trees in the savanna until they started merging together into woodland and then jungle), but I rather like the contrast in environments presented here.
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It's true, coffee does come from Africa (the highlands of Ethiopia, to be specific). Some sources claim an indigenous Ethiopian cultivation and awareness of the coffee bean's properties as far back as the ninth century AD, but it was in the fifteenth century that coffee as a beverage took off in popularity outside the continent, spreading first into the Arabian and Islamic regions before reaching Europe and beyond. However far back its use in our favorite morning drinks goes, we all have Africa to thank for being the birthplace of the coffee plant.
By the way, I created this artwork as a design for coffee mugs to sell on Redbubble. You can buy your own mug with this design here.
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This is a reference sheet I made for Takhaet, an Egyptian warrior character I created for one of my short stories back in 2016. Three years later, I felt enough inspiration to revisit the character that I wrote a second story for her, which is supposed to be a sequel to the first.
To sum up her character, Takhaet is a veteran Egyptian warrior from the 14th century BC who finds herself an unwilling subject of the “Heretic” Pharaoh Akhenaten. When Akhenaten sets out to persecute the traditional Egyptian religion in favor of his own cult of Aten, Takhaet refuses to surrender her faith in the old gods—all while having to protect her niece little Nebet.
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This would be a conceptual design for a heroic princess whose scepter grants her magical powers, among them the ability to communicate with her loyal Tyrannosaurus steed.
I meant this to be a more kid-friendly design that what I normally do, since my original plan was to submit it to a children’s publication called The Brownies’ Book, which has African-American and other minority children between the ages of six and thirteen as its target audience. Basically, I wanted it to look like something you’d see on a Saturday morning cartoon for young girls (although boys would probably enjoy it as well, since lots of kids of both sexes love dinosaurs). Later examination of the publication’s submission terms suggested that they were more interested in written literature than visual art like this, but I am proud of the end result nonetheless.
Maybe, sometime in the distant future, I’d get an animated show with this kind of protagonist off the ground. Who knows?
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A bull Deinotherium bozasi, a distant relative of the elephant, roams the rainforests of Africa, equipped with two downward-curving tusks on its lower jaw. This African species of the Deinotherium genus is known to have lived between 7.3 million and 781,000 years ago, which would have made it a contemporary of the early hominin apes that would evolve into human beings. The two tusks on its lower jaw might have helped it strip down bark or branches for feeding.
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Did you know that almost everything you eat from the grocery store comes from “genetically modified organisms” (or GMOs?). If it was bred into a certain form through centuries of domestication, it counts as genetically modified. If you really want to eat organic (or embark on the so-called “paleo diet”, for that matter), you ought to get all your food from wild plants and animals in the nearest plot of woods or bush.
For that matter, you pet dog or cat would be a GMO too, even if you don’t eat them.
Seriously, I’m hardly anti-environment (things like poaching, pollution, and of course anthropogenic climate change are very genuine problems facing us), but I could never get into the whole “organic” or anti-GMO movement for the reasons stated above. We’ve been genetically modifying our crops and livestock for thousands of years now, so it’s not like they’re automatically less safe if we do it we modern technology nowadays.
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And now for a few pencil drawings...
I drew this prehistoric warrior chick with cartoony proportions as another one of my occasional style experiments. One thing I learned while doing this is that the big doe-eyed look like that of many cartoon or anime heroines looks better if you exaggerate the size of the head as well.
I'd watch my back around this Egyptian queen if I were you. She may be beautiful, but that doesn't mean she can't be deadly as a cobra!
There is in fact a recorded instance of an Egyptian Pharaoh's wife having her husband murdered. This would be Tiye, a secondary wife of Ramses III, who hoped to put her son Pentawere on the throne instead of the Pharaoh's preferred heir Ramses IV. She and her co-conspirators appear to have succeeded in killing the Pharaoh with a cut to the throat, but they failed to usurp Ramses IV's position as the royal heir. Instead, most of the lead conspirators got caught and executed by the Egyptian authorities, although we do not know what happened to Tiye herself.
This Smilodon fatalis came out looking rather regal, if I do say so myself.
Unlike many of the other prehistoric creatures I've drawn, Smilodon is an animal which I've been more or less consistent in coloring over the years (although this would be grayscale like all pencil drawings, of course). I always imagine it as having a gray coat with white spots, which I consider to be logical camouflage for a predator prowling the snowy wilds of North America during the Ice Age.
I drew this black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) two days after World Rhino Day as a belated celebration. Its name notwithstanding, the black rhinoceros stands out from the white species in Africa not by its color but by having a prehensile hooked lip for grasping branches and leaves, as well as being smaller and reputedly more aggressive.
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This would be quick concept art for an African-American archaeologist character from the 1930s, whom I shall call Isis Lincoln. She would have earned her archaeological credentials at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and she would have an appetite for adventure comparable to Indiana Jones. In fact, a large part of the inspiration behind her character comes from the recent suggestion that Indiana himself would be succeeded by a woman, although I personally see Isis more as Indy’s contemporary and maybe even a colleague (or even more than that, at least at one point) if they were to inhabit the same universe.
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This is a digitally colorized, marker-ink portrait of Juba al-Mauri, who is one of the characters from my novelette The Sultan of Finback Isle. Hailing from the mountainous highlands of Morocco, he belongs to an ancient ethnic group in the area known as the Mauri, whose name would evolve into our term “Moorish”. Although he wants more than anything else to help his own decimated people survive in the modern age, his search for profit has brought him into the employment of the story’s antagonist Ibrahim Fawal, a Moroccan-American Chief of Police in Los Angeles who is of Arabic ethnicity and treats Juba with more than a slight dabble of racial prejudice. Also, Juba’s very good with his shotgun, the stock (handle) of which you can see sticking out from behind his back here.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a digitally colorized, marker-ink portrait of Juba al-Mauri, who is one of the characters from my novelette The Sultan of Finback Isle. Hailing from the mountainous highlands of Morocco, he belongs to an ancient ethnic group in the area known as the Mauri, whose name would evolve into our term “Moorish”. Although he wants more than anything else to help his own decimated people survive in the modern age, his search for profit has brought him into the employment of the story’s antagonist Ibrahim Fawal, a Moroccan-American Chief of Police in Los Angeles who is of Arabic ethnicity and treats Juba with more than a slight dabble of racial prejudice. Also, Juba’s very good with his shotgun, the stock (handle) of which you can see sticking out from behind his back here.
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And this would be Juba al-Mauri in full view: Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
A mother Tyrannosaurus rex escorts her hatchlings in her jaws through the misty jungle of Late Cretaceous North America, circa 67 million years ago. Much like a mother crocodile, she is every bit as gentle and doting a parent as she is a ferocious apex predator.
I’ve always been partial to the idea of tyrannosaurids and other theropod dinosaurs taking good care of their young, as portrayed in The Lost World: Jurassic Park for example. Not only would it be consistent with their living relatives, birds and crocodilians, but it gives their personalities more dimension than simply having them be savage brutes all the time.
By the way, please do check out the different coloring technique I used for this artwork. Normally I use strong black outlines like you would see in most comic books, but this time I wanted outlines that “blended” in better with the colors, which I achieved by lowering the opacity of my outline (or “inks”) layer halfway.
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It is 218 BC during the Second Punic War, and the army of Carthage under Hannibal Barca is undertaking their arduous trek through the Alps into Italy where the Roman menace awaits. Among the Carthaginian army's most remarkable assets are its African war elephants, descended from a population residing along the scrubby coastline of northwestern Africa that will ultimately become extirpated sometime after the Romans seize control of the region from Carthage.
If you're wondering why the soldiers here are portrayed with different skin colors, that's because they're supposed to be intermixed between Carthage's Phoenician founders from the area of modern Lebanon and native Africans. The guys driving the elephants would be native recruits. At the height of its power, Carthage's empire would include not only the Northwest African coast but also several islands in the Mediterranean as well as the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).
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This character’s heritage would be based on a variety of ethnic groups residing in the Upper Nile Basin of South Sudan, many of which subsist on cattle husbandry and horticulture as part of their traditional way of life. One example of the cultures I looked to for inspiration was the Shilluk (or Chollo), whose kingdom spread along the White Nile beginning in the 16th century under the leadership of the demigod-like prophet Nyikang. Other nations in the Upper Nile region include those of the Dinka, Nuer, Zande, and Acholi peoples.
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This sketchy portrait represents a woman of the Jomon culture, which occupied Japan in prehistoric times until 300 BC. The people seem to have subsisted as hunter-gatherers with a particularly fondness for fish and other seafood, the abundance of which allowed them to settle down in permanent villages. They even had time to make pottery with elaborate patterns and weave cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree. In the end, however, their culture ended up subsumed by that of the Yayoi people, the latter most probably evolving into modern ethnic Japanese.
I was actually a little unsure how dark-skinned I should make the Jomon woman in this sketch. Apparently, DNA extracted from one 3,800-year-old Jomon female specimen showed she had “moderately dark” skin and thin “curly” or “frizzy” hair, both characteristics seldom associated with modern Japanese, but then the sculpted reconstruction they did of her made her look more like a standard Japanese woman in terms of complexion and hair texture. This depiction is therefore based more on how the woman’s probable appearance was described in the text of these reports.
UPDATE: Here's a colored version with a skin tone and overall appearance that is supposed to be intermediate between the Negrito and Melanesian people on the one hand and the "Sundadont" peoples of Southeast Asia on the other.
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If common sense hadn't told you already, it is generally not a good idea to pet a raptor without their permission. The same could be said of anyone who wears this design on their shirt!
Come to think of it, a shirt design like this could come in handy for sending a much-needed message against sexual assault.
You can purchase your own shirt with this design here.
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This prehistoric warrior is wielding a knife fashioned from a big predator’s serrated tooth. It may appear like primitive weaponry, but you still wouldn’t want to have her stabbing you with it.
Some of the inspiration for this came from the character of Nat-ul, the female love interest in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s prehistoric fantasy novel "The Eternal Lover". Despite the unabashedly sexist period in which the story would have been written, Nat-ul in it is quite formidable with her knife (for example, early on she uses it to slay one of her male abductors).
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Our heroine lies perched atop a rocky precipice overlooking a jungle-swathed valley, gazing down to inspect the treacherous terrain she is about to claim as her new hunting ground.
The pterosaur soaring overhead would be a fictional species I created for this illustration, since it would obviously be taking place in a fantasy world.
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The Egyptian Queen Nefertari is shakin' it!
I don't plan on getting too deep into "Inktober" this year, as many of my black marker pens have dried up over the years, but I still wanted to play with ink at least once this month.
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Siamraptor suwati prowls across a fallen log “bridge” overhanging a river in the jungle of Early Cretaceous Southeast Asia between 125 and 113 million years ago. Named for being uncovered in Thailand (once Siam), Siamraptor was not a “raptor” like Velociraptor but rather one of the carcharodontosaurs, the same group of meat-eating dinosaurs as Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. Nonetheless, it would have grown significantly smaller than either of those dinosaurs, with its body length being estimated at twenty-six feet (or eight meters).
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This is my depiction of Bodhidharma, an Indian monk from the 5-6th century AD who is credited with introducing the Chan (or Zen) tradition of Buddhism to China. He can also be considered the founder of the martial arts school known as Shaolin Kungfu, since it was he who began the Shaolin monks’ training to improve their physical as well as mental conditions. In Chinese, Bodhidharma is also known by the name Putidamo.
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This is my big fan art for Genndy Tartakovsky’s new animated series Primal, the first five episodes of which premiered on the week of October 7th in 2019. These two would be the protagonists Spear and Fang, who are respectively a caveman and a dinosaur who are each the last surviving members of their family. Together, they must struggle to survive in a harsh prehistoric fantasy world populated with a variety of hostile creatures and beings. It’s been an intense first season and I’m eager to see the second as soon as it comes out!
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In the hills of North Africa, within sight of the Atlas Mountains, a Numidian horseman squares off against a Roman legionary. I didn’t have any particular historical war in mind when I drew this, but confrontations like this must have taken place in abundance during the Jugurthine War (named after the Numidian king Jugurtha) between 112 and 106 BC.
In retrospect, I think I drew the Roman guy’s shield too small, but I sorta like the posing here nonetheless.
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I wanted to draw something to celebrate Halloween (even though it’s not really my favorite major holiday), so I created this necromancer character. She came out awfully seductive for someone whose line of work involves raising the dead.
Fun fact: the concept of the zombie comes from Haitian folklore. Originally they were simply corpses reanimated through witchcraft, although raising zombies is not an official practice of the Haitian Vodou faith. I don’t think they were supposed to eat brains or other pieces of human flesh like modern pop-culture zombies though.
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This Egyptian Pharaoh is decked out for the battlefield, with his attire including the blue khepresh crown of war and a cuirass of bronze scale armor. Most ancient Egyptian warriors would have worn little armor due to the hot climate of their homeland, but the Pharaohs themselves were among the few exceptions to that rule as they led their armies into battle.
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On the savannas of East Africa circa 200,000 years ago, an early Homo sapiens woman stands off against a hungry descendent of the saber-toothed cat Machairodus kabir. Which will prevail in this confrontation? The brute strength and agility of the big feline, or good ol’ human ingenuity?
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This African-American woman is balancing herself during a yoga session. Is she simply meditating, or could she be warming up for her martial arts practice?
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This would be a woman from ancient Numidia, a kingdom in North Africa that straddled the area between northeastern Algeria and western Tunisia. I wanted her design to mix elements of native African culture with that of the “classical” Mediterranean cultures the Numidians would have interacted with, such as the Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians. That’s why she has both a Greek-style chiton and a hairstyle inspired by those of Punu women from the Central African country of Gabon.
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Deep in the jungle, our heroine is fighting her way out of the coiling clutches of a hungry giant python.
The theme of a woman struggling against a giant snake has become almost a classic one in the jungle-girl genre of art, so I wanted to do my own take on it. Unlike some of the women in other artists’ portrayals, however, my woman is more than capable of fending the ophidian titan off!
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In Greek mythology, Europa was a princess from the Phoenician city of Sidon (in what is now Lebanon), although her father Agenor was of Egyptian origin and her mother Telephassa (or alternately Argiope) was a daughter of the god of the Nile. While Europa and her maidens were out gathering flowers by the sea, the god Zeus appeared to her as a beautiful white bull who had her ride him over to the island of Crete, where together they had three sons (one of whom would become King Minos, the man who commissioned the infamous Minotaur's Labyrinth).
As you might be able to guess, the myth of Europa is the source of our name for the subcontinent of Europe (as well as one of the planet Jupiter's moons)...which is ironic since neither of her parents were supposed to be of European descent! Ah, well, that's Greek mythology for you.
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This portrait would depict a princess from the city of Ife (or Ile-Ife), which was founded sometime before the 11th century AD and retains sacred significance to the Yoruba people of Nigeria. Her hairstyle is drawn from one of the terracotta sculptures recovered from this city.
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This feisty young princess wouldn't be content idling around her parent's palace and looking pretty. Instead, she'd rather go on daring adventures with a big sword for protection.
The sword, by the way, is inspired by a 17th century design from the kingdom of Benin, located in what is now Nigeria (not to be confused with the modern nation called Benin, which has territory overlapping that of a separate West African kingdom called Dahomey).
Posted by Nassbean (Member # 23084) on :
why do you portray north africans as niger-congo people ? do you have any genetic or historical evidence for this ? Or it's just for fun (i hope) ?
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nassbean: why do you portray north africans as niger-congo people ? do you have any genetic or historical evidence for this ? Or it's just for fun (i hope)?
Genetic Evidence
"North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia"
Source: On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, Harold L. Dibble et al. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013 Elsevier
"In this study we analyzed 295 unrelated Berber-speaking men from northern, central, and southern Morocco to characterize frequency of the E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup and to refine the phylogeny of its subclades: E1b1b1b1-M107, E1b1b1b2-M183, and E1b1b1b2a-M165. For this purpose, we typed four biallelic polymorphisms: M81, M107, M183, and M165.A large majority of the Berber-speaking male lineages belonged to the Y-chromosomal E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup. The frequency ranged from 79.1% to 98.5% in all localities sampled. E1b1b1b2-M183 was the most dominant subclade in our samples, ranging from 65.1% to 83.1%. In contrast, the E1b1b1b1-M107 and E1b1b1b2a-M165 subclades were not found in our samples. Our results suggest a predominance of the E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup among Moroccan Berber-speaking males with a decreasing gradient from south to north."
Source: Phylogeography of E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup and analysis of its subclades in Morocco
Anthropological Evidence
"The extremely large skeletal samples that come from sites such as Taforalt (Fig. 8.13) and Afalou constitute an invaluable resource for understanding the makers of Iberomaurusian artifacts, and their number is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa for the early Holocene. Frequently termed Mechta-Afalou or Mechtoid, these were a skeletally robust people and definitely African in origin, though attempts, such as those of Ferembach (1985), to establish similarities with much older and rarer Aterian skeletal remains are tenuous given the immense temporal separation between the two (Close and Wendorf 1990). At the opposite end of the chronological spectrum, dental morphology does suggest connections with later Africans, including those responsible for the Capsian Industry (Irish 2000) and early mid-Holocene human remains from the western half of the Sahara (Dutour 1989), something that points to the Maghreb as one of the regions from which people recolonised the desert (MacDonald 1998)."
"Another form of body modification was much more widespread and, indeed, a distinctive feature of the Iberomaurusian skeletal sample as a whole. This was the practice of removing two or more of the upper incisors, usually around puberty and from both males and females, something that probably served as both a rite of passage and an ethnic marker (Close and Wendorf 1990), just as it does in parts of sub-Saharan Africa today (e.g., van Reenen 1987). Cranial and postcranial malformations are also apparent and may indicate pronounced endogamy at a much more localised level (Hadjouis 2002), perhaps supported by the degree of variability between different site samples noted by Irish (2000)."
Source: The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge World Archaeology)
"On the remains of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians: "The Phoenicians had nothing in common with the official Jewish type: brachycephal, aquiline or Hittite nose, and so on [...] skulls presumably Phoenician, have been found west of Syracuse [...] but these skulls are dolichocephalic and proganthous, with Negroid affinities"
"Other bones discovered in Punic Carthage, and housed in the Lavigerie Museum, come from personages found in special sarcophagi and probably belonging to the Carthaginian elite. Almost all the skulls are dolichocephalic."
Source: Source: Eugene Pittard "Les races et L' histoire."
"The anthropological examination of skeletons found in tombs in Carthage proves that there is no racial unity [...] The so called Semitic type, characterized by the long, perfectly oval face, the thin aquiline nose and the lengthened cranium, enlarged over the nape of the neck has not been found in Carthage. On the other hand, another cranial form, with a fairly short face, prominent parietal bumps, farther forward and lower down than is usual is common [...] most of the Punic population in Carthage had African and even Negro ancestors"
Source: Charles Picard "Daily Life in Carthage at the time of Hannibal"
"The race which gave birth to the Moroccans can be no other than the African negroes because the same black type [...] is found all the way to Senegal upon the right bank of the river without counting that it has been recognized in various parts of the Sahara [...] and from there comes black Moors who still have thick lips as a result of negro descent and not from intermixture [...] As to the white, bronze, or dark Moors, they are no other than the near relations of black Moors with whom they form the varieties of the same race; and as one can also see among the Europeans, blondes, brunettes, and chestnuts, in the midst of the same population so one may see Moroccans of every color in the same agglomeration without it being a question of their being real mulattos."
Source: “Sur des races noires indigènes qui existaient anciennement dans l’afrique septentrionale”
"Snowden (1970) and Desanges (1981) reference various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In addition to the presence of fair-skinned blonds, various “Ethiopian” or “part-Ethiopian” groups are described, near the coast and on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains. “Ethiopians,” meaning dark-skinned peoples usually having “ulotrichous” (wooly) hair, are noted in various Greek accounts and European coinage (Snowden, 1970). Hiernaux (1975) interprets the finding of “subsaharan” population affinities in living Maghrebans as being solely the result of the medieval transsaharan slave trade; it is clear that this is not the case. Furthermore, the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste."
Source: (S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990)
Documented Evidence
"North African, Berber," late 14c., from Old French More, from Medieval Latin Morus, from Latin Maurus "inhabitant of Mauretania" (northwest Africa, a region now corresponding to northern Algeria and Morocco), from Greek Mauros, perhaps a native name, or else cognate with mauros "black" (but this adjective only appears in late Greek and may as well be from the people's name as the reverse). Being a dark people in relation to Europeans, their name in the Middle Ages was a synonym for "Negro;" later (16c.-17c.) used indiscriminately of Muslims (Persians, Arabs, etc.) but especially those in India
"Mauri, the inhabitants of Mauritania. This name is derived from their black complexion"
Source: A classical dictionary: containing a copious account of all proper names mentioned in ancient authors, with the value of coins, weights, and measures used among the Greeks and Romans, and a chronological table (1822) by John Lemprière
Coat of Arms of Sardinia. As with the heraldry of families named with variants of Mori or Moor, several countries in Europe have flags and coat of arms with the heads of Moors on them. Military historian, Yaacov Lev in the article , “Army Regime and Society in Fatimid Egypt” (1987) wrote of Nasir Khusroes of the 11th century who speaks of the "20,000" Masmuda men that made up part of the Fatimid troops in Egypt in his time saying, “Masamida were Berbers from the Western Maghreb. Nasir-i Khusrau, however, says that they were blacks and characterized them as infantry who used lances and swords”
Source: (from International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19(3), 337-365)
"The blacks are more numerous than the whites. The whites at most consist of the people of Persia, Jibal, and Khurasan, the Greeks, Slavs, Franks, and Avars, and some few others, not very numerous; the blacks include the Zanj, Ethiopians, the people of Fezzan, the Berbers, the Copts, and the Nubians, the people of Zaghawa, the Moors, Sind and India, Qamar and Dabila, China (Southeast Asia), and Masin, the islands in the seas between China (Southeast Asia) and Africa are full of blacks, such as Ceylon, Kalah, Amal, Zabij, and their islands, as far as India, China (Southeast Asia), Kabul, and those shores."
Source: Al-Jahiz (776-869): Al-Fakhar al-Sudan min al-Abyadh (Superiority Of The Blacks To The Whites)
“Ham, having become black because of a curse pronounced against him by his father, fled to the Maghrib to hide in shame.... Berber, son of Kesloudjim [Casluhim], one of his descendants, left numerous posterity in the Maghrib
Source: Ibn Khaldun, Histoire I, 177–178
"Now the real fact, the fact which dispenses with all hypothesis, is this: the Berbers are the children of Canaan, the son of Ham, son of Noah." Down this line came Berr who had two sons, Baranis and Madghis al-Abtar. All Berber tribes descended from one or the other of these brothers and were classified as either Baranes or Botr"
Source: Histoire I, 173–185
Marcus Valerian Martial was one of the earliest Europeans to use the phrase “woolly hair like a Moor” also translated "a Moor with his crisp hair"
Source: Book 6 of "The Epigrams"
"Long ago, after Noah, Blacks inhabited our country: they went up as far as Morocco until from Syria came the first white conquerors: they were light skinned men with grey eyes."
Source: La tradition chez les Ida Aghzeinbou
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
Here are some good articles to start your research....
I wouldn't waste too much breath on Nass. Suffice to say, he's one of the Amazigh nationalist trolls from ForumBiodiversity. I have elected to ignore him here.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: @Ballberith
I wouldn't waste too much breath on Nass. Suffice to say, he's one of the Amazigh nationalist trolls from ForumBiodiversity. I have elected to ignore him here.
Oh, don't worry! I am more accustomed to dealing with people like him. I just wanted to see how he responds to all of this irrefutable evidence, if you get what I mean. Posted by Nassbean (Member # 23084) on :
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith:
quote:Originally posted by Nassbean: why do you portray north africans as niger-congo people ? do you have any genetic or historical evidence for this ? Or it's just for fun (i hope)?
Genetic Evidence
North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia
Source: On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, Harold L. Dibble et al. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013 Elsevier
In this study we analyzed 295 unrelated Berber-speaking men from northern, central, and southern Morocco to characterize frequency of the E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup and to refine the phylogeny of its subclades: E1b1b1b1-M107, E1b1b1b2-M183, and E1b1b1b2a-M165. For this purpose, we typed four biallelic polymorphisms: M81, M107, M183, and M165.A large majority of the Berber-speaking male lineages belonged to the Y-chromosomal E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup. The frequency ranged from 79.1% to 98.5% in all localities sampled. E1b1b1b2-M183 was the most dominant subclade in our samples, ranging from 65.1% to 83.1%. In contrast, the E1b1b1b1-M107 and E1b1b1b2a-M165 subclades were not found in our samples. Our results suggest a predominance of the E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup among Moroccan Berber-speaking males with a decreasing gradient from south to north.
Source: Phylogeography of E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup and analysis of its subclades in Morocco
Anthropological Evidence
The extremely large skeletal samples that come from sites such as Taforalt (Fig. 8.13) and Afalou constitute an invaluable resource for understanding the makers of Iberomaurusian artifacts, and their number is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa for the early Holocene. Frequently termed Mechta-Afalou or Mechtoid, these were a skeletally robust people and definitely African in origin, though attempts, such as those of Ferembach (1985), to establish similarities with much older and rarer Aterian skeletal remains are tenuous given the immense temporal separation between the two (Close and Wendorf 1990). At the opposite end of the chronological spectrum, dental morphology does suggest connections with later Africans, including those responsible for the Capsian Industry (Irish 2000) and early mid-Holocene human remains from the western half of the Sahara (Dutour 1989), something that points to the Maghreb as one of the regions from which people recolonised the desert (MacDonald 1998).
Another form of body modification was much more widespread and, indeed, a distinctive feature of the Iberomaurusian skeletal sample as a whole. This was the practice of removing two or more of the upper incisors, usually around puberty and from both males and females, something that probably served as both a rite of passage and an ethnic marker (Close and Wendorf 1990), just as it does in parts of sub-Saharan Africa today (e.g., van Reenen 1987). Cranial and postcranial malformations are also apparent and may indicate pronounced endogamy at a much more localised level (Hadjouis 2002), perhaps supported by the degree of variability between different site samples noted by Irish (2000).
Source: The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge World Archaeology)
On the remains of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians: "The Phoenicians had nothing in common with the official Jewish type: brachycephal, aquiline or Hittite nose, and so on [...] skulls presumably Phoenician, have been found west of Syracuse [...] but these skulls are dolichocephalic and proganthous, with Negroid affinities
"Other bones discovered in Punic Carthage, and housed in the Lavigerie Museum, come from personages found in special sarcophagi and probably belonging to the Carthaginian elite. Almost all the skulls are dolichocephalic."
Source: Source: Eugene Pittard "Les races et L' histoire."
"The anthropological examination of skeletons found in tombs in Carthage proves that there is no racial unity [...] The so called Semitic type, characterized by the long, perfectly oval face, the thin aquiline nose and the lengthened cranium, enlarged over the nape of the neck has not been found in Carthage. On the other hand, another cranial form, with a fairly short face, prominent parietal bumps, farther forward and lower down than is usual is common [...] most of the Punic population in Carthage had African and even Negro ancestors"
Source: Charles Picard "Daily Life in Carthage at the time of Hannibal"
"The race which gave birth to the Moroccans can be no other than the African negroes because the same black type [...] is found all the way to Senegal upon the right bank of the river without counting that it has been recognized in various parts of the Sahara [...] and from there comes black Moors who still have thick lips as a result of negro descent and not from intermixture [...] As to the white, bronze, or dark Moors, they are no other than the near relations of black Moors with whom they form the varieties of the same race; and as one can also see among the Europeans, blondes, brunettes, and chestnuts, in the midst of the same population so one may see Moroccans of every color in the same agglomeration without it being a question of their being real mulattos."
Source: “Sur des races noires indigènes qui existaient anciennement dans l’afrique septentrionale”
"Snowden (1970) and Desanges (1981) reference various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In addition to the presence of fair-skinned blonds, various “Ethiopian” or “part-Ethiopian” groups are described, near the coast and on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains. “Ethiopians,” meaning dark-skinned peoples usually having “ulotrichous” (wooly) hair, are noted in various Greek accounts and European coinage (Snowden, 1970). Hiernaux (1975) interprets the finding of “subsaharan” population affinities in living Maghrebans as being solely the result of the medieval transsaharan slave trade; it is clear that this is not the case. Furthermore, the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste."
Source: (S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990)
Documented Evidence
"North African, Berber," late 14c., from Old French More, from Medieval Latin Morus, from Latin Maurus "inhabitant of Mauretania" (northwest Africa, a region now corresponding to northern Algeria and Morocco), from Greek Mauros, perhaps a native name, or else cognate with mauros "black" (but this adjective only appears in late Greek and may as well be from the people's name as the reverse). Being a dark people in relation to Europeans, their name in the Middle Ages was a synonym for "Negro;" later (16c.-17c.) used indiscriminately of Muslims (Persians, Arabs, etc.) but especially those in India
Mauri, the inhabitants of Mauritania. This name is derived from their black complexion
Source: A classical dictionary: containing a copious account of all proper names mentioned in ancient authors, with the value of coins, weights, and measures used among the Greeks and Romans, and a chronological table (1822) by John Lemprière
Coat of Arms of Sardinia. As with the heraldry of families named with variants of Mori or Moor, several countries in Europe have flags and coat of arms with the heads of Moors on them. Military historian, Yaacov Lev in the article , “Army Regime and Society in Fatimid Egypt” (1987) wrote of Nasir Khusroes of the 11th century who speaks of the "20,000" Masmuda men that made up part of the Fatimid troops in Egypt in his time saying, “Masamida were Berbers from the Western Maghreb. Nasir-i Khusrau, however, says that they were blacks and characterized them as infantry who used lances and swords”
Source: (from International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19(3), 337-365)
"The blacks are more numerous than the whites. The whites at most consist of the people of Persia, Jibal, and Khurasan, the Greeks, Slavs, Franks, and Avars, and some few others, not very numerous; the blacks include the Zanj, Ethiopians, the people of Fezzan, the Berbers, the Copts, and the Nubians, the people of Zaghawa, the Moors, Sind and India, Qamar and Dabila, China (Southeast Asia), and Masin, the islands in the seas between China (Southeast Asia) and Africa are full of blacks, such as Ceylon, Kalah, Amal, Zabij, and their islands, as far as India, China (Southeast Asia), Kabul, and those shores."
Source: Al-Jahiz (776-869): Al-Fakhar al-Sudan min al-Abyadh (Superiority Of The Blacks To The Whites)
“Ham, having become black because of a curse pronounced against him by his father, fled to the Maghrib to hide in shame.... Berber, son of Kesloudjim [Casluhim], one of his descendants, left numerous posterity in the Maghrib
Source: Ibn Khaldun, Histoire I, 177–178
"Now the real fact, the fact which dispenses with all hypothesis, is this: the Berbers are the children of Canaan, the son of Ham, son of Noah." Down this line came Berr who had two sons, Baranis and Madghis al-Abtar. All Berber tribes descended from one or the other of these brothers and were classified as either Baranes or Botr
Source: Histoire I, 173–185
1st c. A.D.– Marcus Valerian Martial was one of the earliest Europeans to use the phrase “woolly hair like a Moor” also translated "a Moor with his crisp hair"
Source: Book 6 of "The Epigrams"
Long ago, after Noah, Blacks inhabited our country: they went up as far as Morocco until from Syria came the first white conquerors: they were light skinned men with grey eyes.
Source: La tradition chez les Ida Aghzeinbou
You don't even understand what you're posting ....smh : first of all aterians are a middle and upper paleolithic people and they have never been berbers or part of the berber genome at their time there were "black" populations all over the world so taking them to prove that NAs were black is a weak argument I asked for "ancient berbers" (so when history began) not extremely old populations. E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup is a berber haplogroup specific of north africa and most of modern north africans have this haplogroup ....so what's your point ? thanks for contradicting yourself.
Again you show here your ignorance because genetically iberomaurusians are not considered as a black population :
quote:Moreover, our model predicts that West Africans (represented by Yoruba) had 12.5±1.1% ancestry from a Taforalt-related group rather than Taforalt having ancestry from an unknown Sub-Saharan African source11; this may have mediated the limited Neanderthal admixture present in West Africans23. An advantage of our model is that it allows for a local North African component in the ancestry of Taforalt, rather than deriving them exclusively from Levantine and Sub-Saharan sources.
and guess what ? a recent study has just proved that there is a genetic continuity since the iberomaurusian era :
quote:An international team of scientists has for the first time performed an analysis of the complete genome of the population of North Africa. They have identified a small genetic imprint of the inhabitants of the region in Palaeolithic times, thus ruling out the theory that recent migrations from other regions completely erased the genetic traces of ancient North Africans The study was led by David Comas, principal investigator at UPF and at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF) and it has been published in the journal Current Biology." “ We see that the current populations of North Africa are the result of this replacement but we detect small traces of this continuity from Palaeolithic times, i.e., total replacement did not take place in the populations of North Africa”, reveals David Comas, full professor of Biological Anthropology at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) at UPF. “We do not know whether the first settlers 300,000 years ago are their ancestors, but we do detect imprints of this continuity at least since Palaeolithic times, since 15,000 years ago or more” he adds
plenty of NAs today are almost half iberomaurusian as you can see here (just one example because the number of pics are limited here) :
none of them look black or biracial.
Now about these carthaginians ...lmao wtf is that your source is an old book from 1924 (https://www.amazon.fr/races-lhistoire-PITTARD-Eugene/dp/B003WVFYUU) and dolichocephalic isn't a specific negroid trait it's found all over the world. Reality about carthaginians is this :
Also in ancient times the word "Aethiops" was used by greco-roman scholars to describe any black population and they never used it for north africans.
About moroccans I didn't find any information about your source and I'm a french speaker...probably a very old and biased source but what he's saying is right some black populations have been natives to some part of the sahara and miscegenation happened a lot of times and this phenomena was amplified by the trans-saharan slave trade as you can see here :
quote:Our most recent estimated dates correlate with sub-Saharan admixture in North Africa, which is continuous during the last few centuries (from the 13th century to the 20th century, see cluster L in fig. 5), as previously suggested by historical records (Newman 1995) and genetic data (Harich et al. 2010; Henn et al. 2012).However, it is noteworthy that very precise dates are found in some cases in the 17th century in western clusters (see cluster K and M). The admixture dates in the 17th century could be the consequence of the trans-Saharan slave trade that resulted from the Ottoman rule in North Africa and the arrival of the Crown of Castile and the Portuguese Kingdom to the West African seaports in the 16th century. The Iberian presence, driven by the search of a workforce in their recent settled Atlantic territories, modified the political and socioeconomic structure of Western Africa. This also intensified traffic through trans-Saharan routes to North Africa after the emergence of the sugar industry in this region and the Atlantic territories (Newman 1995; Oliver and Atmore 2001; Da Mosto 2003). Comparison of inferred ancestry proportions between the autosomes and X chromosome in Cluster M is indicative of sex-biased admixture with an overabundance of males with Middle Eastern (Syrian-like) ancestry and females with sub-Saharan African (Yoruba-like) ancestry. Moreover, we infer a lower proportion of sub-Saharan ancestry older than previously described in all admixture events dated from the first century B.C., which could be attributed to more ancient slave trade during the Roman or Islamic periods , such as the servile Haratin population of Nilo-Saharan origin in Berber groups such as the Sanhadja and Zenata (Newman 1995). Caution is warranted, however, as there are serious difficulties in reliably estimating the proportions contributed by each source population in the admixture events, mainly because the lack of a proper ancestral North African population. In our analyses, we have considered the population from Tunisia Chenini as the best proxy, but genetic drift in Chenini samples due to isolation and interbreeding might substantially underestimate the contribution of the autochthonous ancestral groups in extant North African populations.
quote:A proportion of 1/4 to 1/2 of North African female pool is made of typical sub-Saharan lineages, in higher frequencies as geographic proximity to sub-Saharan Africa increases. The Sahara was a strong geographical barrier against gene flow, at least since 5,000 years ago, when desertification affected a larger region, but the Arab trans-Saharan slave trade could have facilitate enormously this migration of lineages. " " The interpolation analyses and complete sequencing of present mtDNA sub-Saharan lineages observed in North Africa support the genetic impact of recent trans-Saharan migrations, namely the slave trade initiated by the Arab conquest of North Africa in the seventh century. Sub-Saharan people did not leave traces in the North African maternal gene pool for the time of its settlement, some 40,000 years ago
Also I've never denied that there were some blacks in NA ...there are multiple mentions of blacks mercenaries in the carthaginian armies or in south tunisia for example but they were not berbers or viewed as such and they were a very tiny minority like today.
As for archeological documents and testimonials :
from herodotus's trip in egypt -->
quote:After this man the priest enumerate to me from a papyrus the names of other Kings, three hundred and thirty in number; and in all these generations of men eighteen were Ethiopians, one was a woman and the rest were men and of Egyptian race.
so clear distinction between "ethiopians" and egyptians.
quote:The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone. Manilius, Astronomica 4.724
quote:The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically.
Arrian, Indica 6.9
quote:As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in color, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians.
Strabo, Geography 15.1.13
quote:Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, by the fountain of the sun.
Xenpohanes (Hesoid, works and says, 527-8)
quote:It was a market place to which the Ethiopians bring all the products of their country; and the Egyptians in their turn take them all away and bring to the same spot their own wares of equal value, so bartering what they have got for what they have not. Now the inhabitants of the marches (Nubian/Egyptians border) are not yet fully black but are half-breeds in matter of color, for they are partly not so black as the Ethiopians, yet partly more so than the Egyptians .
Flavius Philostratus: c.170 to c.247,
The word "mauri" was an ethnonym used for north-west africans and comes from the punic word "mahurim" which means "westerners" (because they lived west of carthage) (https://www.persee.fr/doc/bmsap_0037-8984_1903_num_4_1_7671) so It had nothing to do with "black" or dark skin also don't confuse it with another term "blackamoor" which was an artistic movement.
I can post thousands of evidence like these ones but i will finish this answer by showing a genetic study who show that guanches ( who were isolated from most foreign invasions) were identical to modern north africans :
quote:Our results show that the Guanches were genetically similar over time and that they display the greatest genetic affinity to extant Northwest Africans, strongly supporting the hypothesis of a Berber-like origin
@ Baal Todah rabba 4 linx 2 Dana's blog! I see she explained why she left ES. Ah well.
Anyway the archaeology, genetics, and anthropology of the Maghreb and adjacent regions, from the Pleistocene to now, has been extensively covered on ES these past 15 years.
Nassbean has a partial point. Though of course it's absolutely wrong in general. Herm art and mosaics show black types of classical era iMazighen have a distinctive enough set of features differing from the imaginative negro stereotype which is not in the least universal south of the Tropic of Cancer.
A fantasy artist is certainly free to render whatever. It's up to the viewer to realize fantasy from reality. Just as the astute reader discerns obviously biased propaganda from a less loaded presentation.
Bias is obvious when an entire forum's membership is deemed monolithic in outlook and disparagingly labeled Afrocentric forgetting that the mainstream is in fact >85% Euro in ethnicity and thus Eurocentric in outlook.
@ T-hotep Sorry to take your thread off topic but this is where the blackless Maghreb, Masriq, Tropical North Africa (i.e. Sahara) nonsense was broached. Both of the unbalanced viewpoints miss the fact of near timeless N Afr diversity and contacts.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Ok, look at the OP Kel and RP coastals rendered in THIS thread. Only the Numidian's hairstyle and face 'tats' look innaccurate or unlikely when compared to a Roman frieze of such cavaliers. As for his Numidian woman, Brandon carefully details the assembled elements of an admitted pastiche that never existed anywhere outside his imagination.
Can't figure what there is to stew about?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nassbean: why do you portray north africans as niger-congo people ? do you have any genetic or historical evidence for this ? Or it's just for fun (i hope) ?
which picture of his are you referring to?
check out his the website to see where he's coming from
A showcase for the art and writing of Brandon Pilcher. Dinosaurs, ancient history, and strong and sexy heroines await ye!
To an extent Black females are the same type regardless of the region because that is the type he finds to be sexy. So the historical part is a layer laid on top of the sexual fantasy making it educational at the same time.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
as if you made that
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nassbean:
also here some coins depicting famous carthaginian figures :
You're not doing a proper job here. You are posting photos with information
from Ibiza Spain, from Phoenicians who originated in Lebanon and colonized other parts the Levant, North Africa and Spain across the Mediterranean between 1500 BC and 300 BC.
instead look at the Capsian culture of the Mesolithic and Neolithic Maghreb Maghreb
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ario: Ah ha ha.. tyrannocuck deleted my posts..
Uncalled for! For those unaware cuck (cuckold - a man who stands by other men using his wife for sex) is a slur used by yte supremacists, especially when fishing for recruits. Everyone knows wewuzkangs is race bait. This poster is about hate directed at blx and yte perceived race traitors.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/10/30/us/white-supremacist-woman-reeve/ She went from a liberal non-voter to burning books with white supremacists. Here's why she finally left the movement . . . . In the fall of 2016, Samantha's indie-rock-loving boyfriend changed. He started lifting weights and making jokes she didn't understand. When she finally Googled them, she discovered they were based on an elaborate, violent, white supremacist fantasy called the "Day of the Rope," in which people of color, Jews, gays and the "race traitors" who helped them, are murdered.
"I couldn't believe it," Samantha said. "We both knew so many people that fit that description." Her boyfriend reassured her they were just jokes. But then, she says, he looked her in the eye and said that he was a fascist, and that he couldn't be with anyone who wasn't. . . . . . "Like it starts as a joke where you laugh nervously. Then you kind of stop laughing, 'cause you're used to it," she said. "And then you start to post it yourself, because you want to be a part of that. And it's this really quick, quick descension into that." . . . . She became an interviewer for Identity Evropa, testing whether new applicants were fluent in white power ideology and screening out Jews and people of color. She told herself that she wasn't racist, just "pro-white." . . . . The alt-right emerged from the same parts of the internet as violently misogynist groups like incels, or involuntarily celibate men. . . . . ... there's no single leader who dictates the culture and doctrine. Instead that's created and enforced by largely anonymous people on message boards and in chat rooms, each one trying to one-up the others
Joanna Schroeder has a warning for parents of teen and tween white boys: If you don't pay attention to their online lives, the white supremacists will.
"They've studied the way that our young men interact online, and they have looked at what these boys need," she said. "And they have learned how to fill those needs in order to entice them into propaganda."
"I know my kids understand Hitler, but as I scrolled through his [social media] I saw more memes that joked about the Holocaust and joked about slavery," Schroeder said. The impact, she said, seemed to be "desensitizing our kids to things we should be sensitive to." . . . . ... she was jolted when she heard her elder son talking about being "triggered."
"You'll hear this from your conservative uncle, and you may also hear this from a kid that's getting a lot of alt-right messaging online — that everyone's too sensitive today," she said. "That is entryway kind of terminology. It's not racist. No, it's not. But it's often used against people who are calling out racism or sexism or homophobia."
Other terms she tells parents to listen for include
quote:• snowflake; • kek, a form of "lol" that sometimes refers to an ironic white nationalist 'religion'; • cuck; • chad; • femenoid; • beta; • "Blood and Soil," • and the numbers 14 or 88, for their association with Hitler and Nazism.
The words may not appear obviously racist or sexist in themselves, but they have been co-opted by extremists and, in some cases, taken on new meanings (https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/09/28/us/hate-symbols-changing-trnd/) . . . . "I wanted parents to know," she said. "To pay attention, because this particular group of boys is being targeted and these parents have no idea." . . . . ... memes begin to normalize ideals that are repugnant, she says. And those ideas can seem to have merit as teens go through the struggles of growing up.
"First boys are inundated by memes with subtly racist, sexist, and homophobic, anti-Semitic jokes and being kids, they don't see the nuance and they repeat and share," Schroeder said. "Then they are shunned in school or socially." . . . . After the deadly 2017 Unite the Right protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, • Twitter suspended alt-right and white nationalists accounts. • Reddit began putting threads that had white nationalist or alt-right propaganda under "quarantine" in 2017. • And Discord, an app designed initially for communication between gamers, has begun purging white nationalist content.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
^ I will do everything I can to persuade the admins to ban his ass, don't worry.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Good lord. Ive had posts removed within 8 hrs. Jari got banned lickety kite for exposing Arab racial nationalism. Take some dang screenshots to save for admin, delete what needs deleting, and bumrush this sucka head first out the door. One set of rules for all regardless of race.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
While we are waiting for the Ario situation to be sorted out...
It’s a battle for predatory supremacy in Late Cretaceous North America as these Dakotaraptor steini take on a mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.
As the viewer might guess, this scene was very much inspired by the iconic conclusion to the climax in Jurassic Park. It’s also a tribute to older dinosaur depictions wherein packs of dromaeosaurids (most commonly Deinonychus) would gang up on larger dinosaurs to take them down. It could simply be my perception, but somehow I haven’t seen as many of those scenes in more recent paleoart. I miss those days.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This character would be an Egyptian gladiatrix who fights for the entertainment of Roman audiences. The design isn’t necessarily meant to be all that historically accurate, but given that female gladiators are known from Roman records (albeit not commonly) and that Egypt was among the Roman Empire’s most economically important provinces, the existence of a character like her shouldn’t be beyond possibility.
By the way, I wanted to try out a “cel-shading” approach (like you see in hand-drawn animation) with this piece, which is why the highlights and shaded areas have sharper edges than in most of my other work.
Posted by gorden (Member # 23153) on :
Hey Bruce, I loved your art, it's so beautiful! Would you consider participating in a project on European history as well? I want to start a business in Germany, pretty much based on publishing and translating history books with illustrations. Well, it's not an active project yet and I'm still looking for a commercial property in Germany as the base of my own publishing house but I'd love to have contact with talented illustrators before I begin. So, if you are interested please contact me!
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Here would be a character of mine Itaweret, an ancient Egyptian priestess from my novel-in-progress Priestess of the Lost Colony. This isn't how she dresses in the novel itself, of course, but I wanted to have a little fun with her by drawing her in a modern hip-hop fashion style.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
If that asteroid had never struck the Earth sixty-six million years ago, what would the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex have evolved into? Maybe it'd have even stronger jaws and even smaller arms?
I'm actually not 100% sold on the scenario of tyrannosaurids gradually losing their forelimbs if they were to survive to the present day (those arms, while relatively short, would have still been quite muscular and so might have retained some function), but from an aesthetic standpoint, shorter arms does help visually distinguish this hypothetical descendent of T. rex from its Cretaceous ancestor.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:You don't even understand what you're posting ....smh : first of all aterians are a middle and upper paleolithic people and they have never been berbers or part of the berber genome at their time there were "black" populations all over the world so taking them to prove that NAs were black is a weak argument I asked for "ancient berbers" (so when history began) not extremely old populations.
I don't understand what i'm posting?!! Are you absurd? The Aterians are the very foundation of early North African cultures and who the Amazigh would eventually be! The Amazigh practically descends from these people! Sure they died out, like most prehistoric cultures, but they are important enough to be mentioned! Also, how is it a weak argument to use the Aterians as representatives of Ancient North Africans! I mean what's weak about using the first people to settle North Africa?!! By the way, I love how you blatantly admit that most of the World’s population in some Prehistoric periods were dark skinned via “Black” and resembled “tropical Africans”! That such relieving news! I thought I was going to have to waste time explaining this simple concept to you. I guess we can put to rest the “Eurasian Backflow” creating a “racial” demographic shift in North Africa since the people of the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopatamia, and Arabia would be what we consider “Black” back then, huh?
"They were clearly a Negroid people, said Sir Arthur, with wide faces flat-noses and long large heads."
Source: 1932 NY Times “BONES OF CANNIBALS A PALESTINE RIDDLE” (Discovery of the Natufians)
“..one can identify Negroid traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the unknown predecessors of the Badarians and Tasians...."
Source: (Angel 1972. Biological Relations of Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean Populations.. JrnHumEvo 1:1, p307
"Ofer Bar-Yosef cites the microburin technique and “microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillah points" as well as the parthenocarpic figs found in Natufian territory originated in the Sudan."
Source: Bar-Yosef O., Pleistocene connections between Africa and SouthWest Asia
"From the Mesolithic to the early Neolithic period different lines of evidence support an out-of-Africa Mesolithic migration to the Levant by northeastern African groups that had biological affinities with sub-Saharan populations. From a genetic point of view, several recent genetic studies have shown that sub Saharan genetic lineages (affiliated with the Y-chromosome PN2 clade; Underhill et al. 2001) have spread through Egypt into the Near East, the Mediterranean area, and, for some lineages, as far north as Turkey (E3b-M35 Y lineage; Cinniogclu et al. 2004; Luis et al. 2004), probably during several dispersal episodes since the Mesolithic (Cinniogelu et al. 2004; King et al. 2008; Lucotte and Mercier 2003; Luis et al. 2004; Quintana-Murci et al. 1999; Semino et al. 2004; Underhill et al. 2001). This finding is in agreement with morphological data that suggest that populations with sub-Saharan morphological elements were present in northeastern Africa, from the Paleolithic to at least the early Holocene, and diffused northward to the Levant and Anatolia beginning in the Mesolithic…This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations...”
Source: (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005)
“In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005), in concordance with a process of demie diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."
“A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype.”
Source: Ricaut et al 2008. Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Popion Hum Bio 80:5 535-64
“Many human craniofacial dimensions are largely of neutral adaptive significance, and an analysis of their variation can serve as an indication of the extent to which any given population is genetically related to or differs from any other. When 24 craniofacial measurements of a series of human populations are used to generate neighbor-joining dendrograms, it is no surprise that all modern European groups, ranging all of the way from Scandinavia to eastern Europe and throughout the Mediterranean to the Middle East, show that they are closely related to each other. The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa. Basques and Canary Islanders are clearly associated with modern Europeans. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of the academic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it.”
Source: A Revised Root for the Human Y Chromosomal Phylogenetic Tree: The Origin of Patrilineal Diversity in Africa
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
Source: (Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
“The early colonists of Babylonia were of the same race as the inhabitants of the Upper Nile.”
Source: “PreHistoric Nations” (1869)
"First there is the Eurafrican...In ancient times, this type is found in Mesopotamia and Egypt and may be compared with the Ombe Capelle skull. It is possibly identical with men who lived in the high desert west of the Nile in paleolithic times.." (-Penniman, T.K. "A Note on the Inhabitants of Kish.."
Source: Excavations at Kish, 1923-33 Vol 4. pp 65-72)
"Another impression that arose on the first examination was that the Eridu skulls showed a marked prognathism .. Keith's interesting conclusions-that the skulls of the ancient Sumerians were relatively narrow, that they were dolichocephalic, a large-headed, large-brained people, approaching or exceeding in these respects the longer-headed races of Europe, and that the men's noses were long and wide-is applicable to some of the 'Ubaid dead of the latter half of the third and the beginning of the second millennium B.C."
Source: Cambridge Ancient Hist, Vol 1, Part I, 1970, p. 348; 358
"The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type."
Source: (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)
“based on the statuaries and steles of Babylonia, the Sumerians were “of dark complexion (chocolate colour), short stature, but of sturdy frame, oval face, stout nose, straight hair, full head; they typically resembled the Dravidians, not only in cranium, but almost in all the details.”
Source: “A Study in Hindu Social Polity”
The second study concerns physical examination of Sumerian skulls. Buxton and Rice have found that of 26 Sumerian crania they examined 22 were Australoid or Austrics. Further According to Penniman who studied skulls from other Sumerian sites, the Australoid Eurafrican, Austric and Armenoid were the "racial" types associated with the Sumerians. Here is Penniman's description of the Austric type found at Sumer:
"These people are of medium stature, with complexion and hair like those of the Eurafrican, to which race they are allied with dark eyes, and oval faces, broad noses, rather feeble jaws, and slight sinewy bodies."
Source: “Tracing the Origin of Ancient Sumerians”
“Mr. Baldwin draws a marked distinction between the modern Mahomedan Semitic population of Arabia and their great Cushite, Hamite or Ethiopian predecessors. The former, he says, “are comparatively modern in Arabia,” they have “appropriated the reputation of the old race,” and have unduly occupied the chief attention of modern scholars.”
Source: Traditions Superstitions and Folklore, Charles Hardwick , Manchester A. Ireland and Company
“The south Arabs represent a residue of hamitic populations which at one time occupied the whole of Arabia.”
Source: Pre-historic nations or inquiries Concerning Some of the Great peoples and Civilizations of Antiquity
“Among these Negroid features which may be counted normal in Arabs are the full, rather everted lips, shortness and width of nose, certain blanks in the bearded areas of the face between the lower lip and chin and on the cheeks; large, luscious, gazelle-like eyes, a dark brown complexion, and a tendency for the hair to grow in ringlets. Often the features of the more Negroid Arabs are derivatives of Dravidian India rather than inheritances of Hamitic Africa. Although the Arab of today is sharply differentiated from the Negro of Africa, yet there must have been a time when both were represented by a single ancestral stock; in no other way can the prevalence of certain Negroid features be accounted for in the natives of Arabia.”
Source: Memoirs Arabs of Central Iraq; Their History, Ethnology and Physical C haracters, Anthropology Memoirs Volume 4
“There is a considerable mass of evidence to show that there was a very close resemblance between the proto-Egyptians and the Arabs before either became intermingled with Armenoid racial elements.”
Source: The Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of Civilization, p.61 2007
“In Arabia the first inhabitants were probably a dark-skinned, shortish population intermediate, between the African Hamites and the Dravidians of India and forming a single African Asiatic belt with these.”
Source: the Handbook of the Territories which form the Theatre of Operations of the Iraq Petroleum Company Limited and its Associated Companies, First Edition, Compiled in the Companies Head office at 214 Oxford Street
Some of these quotes, although outdated, are still useful and credible, especially when there are updated materials that follows by. But, that's neither here nor there.
quote:E1b1b1b-M81 haplogroup is a berber haplogroup specific of north africa and most of modern north africans have this haplogroup ....so what's your point ? thanks for contradicting yourself.
My point is that this so-called “Berber” haplogroup has its origins in Eastern Africa and is associated with other “Africans”, you dunce!
“Haplogroup E1b1b (formerly known as E3b) represents the last major direct exodus from Africa into Europe believed to have appeared first in the Horn of Africa about 26,000 years ago and scattered to North Africa and the Near East during the late Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. E1b1b lineages are closely linked to the diffusion of Afro-asiatic languages.”
“The highest genetic diversity of haplogroup E1b1b is noted in Northeast Africa region in Ethiopia and Somalia, which also have the monopoly of older and rarer sub-clades like M281, V6 or V92.”
I made no contradiction, I meant what I meant, but apparently you can’t handle the information laid before you, so you have to resort to attacks.
quote:Again you show here your ignorance because genetically iberomaurusians are not considered as a black population
Wrong! The Iberomaurusians originated from “North Africa” and indirectly “Inner Eastern Africa!'' They were not Backflows or significantly more “Eurasian” than “African”!
“The Iberomaurusian arose independently in North Africa with no presently known cultural antecedents. Its epicenter may have been in Algeria, from where it spread westwards into Morocco and east into Libya and Cyrenaica. The earliest dates for Tamar Hat and slightly 40 younger ages from Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt and Kehf el Hammar (36), and much younger dates from Libya and Cyrenaica are consistent with this scenario. They imply a cultural break around 25,000 cal. yBP.”
“It is surprising that we observe a high proportion (36.5%) of sub-Saharan African ancestry in 596 Taforalt. First, present-day North Africans do not have as high sub-Saharan African ancestry as 597 the Taforalt individuals (Fig. 2B+S12). This may be attributed to more recent events, such as the 598 historical Arab expansion. Also, the periodic expansion of the Saharan desert played a major role 599 in limiting gene flow between North and sub-Saharan Africa throughout time. For example, a 600 previous study of ancient Egyptian genomes shows that the genetic affinity with the Near East 601 was even stronger in the first millennium BCE in Egypt (5). Importantly, our Taforalt individuals 602 predate the most recent greening of the Sahara by several millennia (84). Thus, we may speculate 603 that the sub-Saharan African ancestry in Taforalt derived from the gene pool of pre-LGM North 604 Africans, who belong to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) cultures (10).”
Source: Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human pop, Krause 2018
Pay no mind to the assumption the article is making about the Ancient Egyptians, this is just a little bit of cherry picking. It’s pretty clear that the analysis done in 2017 in Abusir-El Meleq, “Northern” Middle Egypt was heavily flawed, especially since they only three mummified remains out of a total of one hundred fifty mummies. All three mummies, by the way, were dated in the late 1st Millennium BCE. Let's evaluate this.
Study implied that ancient Egyptians came from the Asia, and that "sub-Saharan" Africans are recent due to the Islamic slave trades: “Schuenemann et al.1 seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient Study implied that ancient Egyptians came from the Asia, and that "sub-Saharan" Africans are recent due to the Islamic slave trade: “Schuenemann et al.1 seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient DNA study of later period remains from northern Egypt, that the”ancient Egyptians” as an entity came from Asia and that modern Egyptians “received additional sub-Saharan African admixtures in recent times” after the latest period of the pharaonic era due to the “trans-Saharan slave trade and Islamic expansion..” There are alternative interpretations of the results but which were not presented as is traditionally done, with the exception of the admission that results from southern Egyptians may have been different. The alternative interpretations involve three major considerations: 1) sampling and methodology, 2) historiography and 3) definitions as they relate to populations, origins and evolution.” Tiny sample sizes: “The whole genome sample size is too small (n=3) to accurately permit a discussion of all Egyptian population history from north to south.”
Other DNA data show substantial African affinity: “Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed short tandem repeats (STRs) from Amarna royal mummies5 (1,300 BC), and of Ramesses III (1,200 BC)6; Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage7. Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator18 based on the same published data5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA” which is not the only way to be “African”- a point worth repeating.”
Arbitrary definition of some DNA haplogroups as ‘Asian’ problematic: “Conceptually what genetic markers are considered to be “African” or “Asian” .. For example, the E1b1b1 (M35/78) lineage found in one Abusir el-Meleq sample is found not only in northern Africa, but is also well represented in eastern Africa and perhaps was taken to Europe across the Mediterranean before the Holocene (Trombetta, personal communication). E lineages are found in high frequency (>70%) among living Egyptians in Adaima9. The authors define all mitochondrial M1 haplogroups as “Asian” which is problematic. M1 has been postulated to have emerged in Africa10, and there is no convincing evidence supporting an M1 ancestor in Asia: many M1 daughter haplogroups (M1a) are clearly African in origin and history10. The M1a1, M1a2a, M1a1i, M1a1e variants found in the Abusir el-Meleq samples1 predate Islam and are abundant in SSA groups10, particularly in East Africa.”
So called “sub-Saharan” patterns in place from the beginning in Egypt and are not merely the product of the ‘slave trade.’ “Furthermore, SSA groups indicated to have contributed to modern Egypt do not match the Muslim trade routes that have been well documented11 as SSA groups from the great lakes and southern African regions were largely absent in the internal trading routes that went north to Egypt. It is important to note that “SSA” influence may not be due to a slave trade, an overdone explanation; the green Sahara is to be considered as Egypt is actually in the eastern Sahara. SSA affinities of modern Egyptians from Abusir El-Meleq might be attributed to ancient early settlers as there is a notable frequency of the “Bushmen canine”- deemed a SSA trait in Predynastic samples dating to 4,000 BC9 from Adaima, Upper Egypt. Haplogroup L0f, usually associated with southern Africans, is present in living Egyptians in Adaima9 and could represent the product of an ancient “ghost population” from the Green Sahara that contributed widely. Distributions and admixtures in the African past may not match current “SSA” groups12.”
Definition of ‘African’ stereotypical, even as strangely, authors exclude many actual African samples near Egypt from the data “Schuenemann et al.1 seem to implicitly suggest that only SSA equals Africa and that there are no interconnections between the various regions of Africa not rooted in the slave trade, a favorite trope. It has to be noted too that in the Islamic armies that entered Egypt that there were a notable number of eastern Africans. It is not clear why there is an emphasis on ‘sub-Saharan’ when no Saharan or supra-Saharan population samples--empirical or modelled are considered; furthermore, there is no one way to be “sub-Saharan.” In this study northern tropical Africans, such as lower and upper Nubians and adjacent southern Egyptians and Saharans were not included as comparison groups, as noted by the authors themselves.”
And here's the kicker, the Geneticists acknowledge this….
"In their paper, the researchers acknowledged that “all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt.”
quote:and guess what ? a recent study has just proved that there is a genetic continuity since the iberomaurusian era
And guess what?! Your own quote says that this prehistoric genetic continuity is small in modern North Africans!
“They have identified a small genetic imprint of the inhabitants of the region in Palaeolithic times”
Also, showing me a bar graph estimating some random guy’s DNA results isn't really telling me anything, especially since many geneticists don't take in consideration the “mixture” of what makes North Africans “North African” and they hypocritically lump geopolitical regions like the Middle East or parts of the Middle East with North Africa, while excluding regions in Africa with a significant genetic impact! Overall there's no breakdown of what makes up these ancestral populations, thus making your point moot!
quote:none of them look black or biracial.
Riiiight....
Portrait of an amazigh woman (Imilchil, Morocco), Kate Peters
Two imazighen girls during the filming of Zaïna: Rider of the Atlas (Morocco, 2005), P. Demange
Imazighen men (2010, Imilchil, Morocco), Abdelhak Senna
Imazighen isawiyen/chaoui men from Khenguet Sidi Nadji, Biskra, Algeria, F. Castel
Amazigh man from M'Sila Algeria, Fayez Nureldine
Portrait of an amazigh woman from the High Atlas, Morocco, Alan Keohane
Amazing portrait of an amazigh elder woman from Ourika Valley, Morocco, @boublouhs
Amazing photo of a group of imazighen men from Ouazzane, Morocco, @ojrober
Awww, how cute! Your now moving the goalposts! You dismissed the evidence above as outdated, while you yourself continue to use materials and resources that are also considered outdated! That’s adorable! “It's wrong because I say so!” Right?! You must be screaming inside, because you have to lay your eyes on the testimony of the same people who gave you the “Mediterranean” race a century ago! Your Worldview is being dismantled into pieces as we speak, when you glimpse your eyes on that cursed word and eventually is forced to read out every instance of each quote, while concluding that the Ancient remains of these North African folk, from which you probably descend, are “Negroes” of “Negroid” affiliations! That's got to give you a headache doesn't it? You were so hyped over the fact that the Ancients could have looked like you, weren't you? Also, in older anthropological analysis on Human remains, Dolichocephalic crania was seen as being a "Negroid" characteristic, despite it being a common characteristic in most of the World population. But even then, Anthropologists would decidedly labeled Eastern Africans, some West Africans and Central Africans, South Asians, Malays, Pacific Islanders, and even indigenous Americans as “Mediterranean”. Oh the irony of it all! Personally, i’m not obsessed with phenotypes. Nay quite to the contrary, I understand the dynamic and complexity of racial terminologies, unlike you! You know, it's really funny that you decided to attack me over the age and credibility of one of my sources, while blatantly ignoring all of the other quotes detailing the remains of Ancient North Africans in recent times!
“The extremely large skeletal samples that come from sites such as Taforalt (Fig. 8.13) and Afalou constitute an invaluable resource for understanding the makers of Iberomaurusian artifacts, and their number is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa for the early Holocene. Frequently termed Mechta-Afalou or Mechtoid, these were a skeletally robust people and definitely African in origin, though attempts, such as those of Ferembach (1985), to establish similarities with much older and rarer Aterian skeletal remains are tenuous given the immense temporal separation between the two (Close and Wendorf 1990). At the opposite end of the chronological spectrum, dental morphology does suggest connections with later Africans, including those responsible for the Capsian Industry (Irish 2000) and early mid-Holocene human remains from the western half of the Sahara (Dutour 1989), something that points to the Maghreb as one of the regions from which people recolonised the desert (MacDonald 1998).”
“Another form of body modification was much more widespread and, indeed, a distinctive feature of the Iberomaurusian skeletal sample as a whole. This was the practice of removing two or more of the upper incisors, usually around puberty and from both males and females, something that probably served as both a rite of passage and an ethnic marker (Close and Wendorf 1990), just as it does in parts of sub-Saharan Africa today (e.g., van Reenen 1987). Cranial and postcranial malformations are also apparent and may indicate pronounced endogamy at a much more localised level (Hadjouis 2002), perhaps supported by the degree of variability between different site samples noted by Irish (2000).”
Source: The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge World Archaeology)
"Snowden (1970) and Desanges (1981) reference various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In addition to the presence of fair-skinned blonds, various “Ethiopian” or “part-Ethiopian” groups are described, near the coast and on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains. “Ethiopians,” meaning dark-skinned peoples usually having “ulotrichous” (wooly) hair, are noted in various Greek accounts and European coinage (Snowden, 1970). Hiernaux (1975) interprets the finding of “subsaharan” population affinities in living Maghrebans as being solely the result of the medieval transsaharan slave trade; it is clear that this is not the case. Furthermore, the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste."
quote:Reality about carthaginians is this:
Reality isn't your thing my friend. Anyone with some basic knowledge of the Phoenicians would know that they had colonies across the Mediterranean, not just parts of North Africa! It's obvious that the remains of the discovered “Phonecian” boy was likely from the Phoenicians colonies in the Mediterranean Sea or possibly the Iberian Peninsula. Regardless, it doesn't change anything, as the remains of the “Phoenician” was not buried in the Phoenicians homeland, the Levant, and again the Geneticists selected a small sample of remains to represent both the Phoenician and Carthagian population, an extremely small sample! Just one! So your point is moot!
quote:also here some coins depicting famous carthaginian figures :
Ok, you showed two minted coins of the Punic God, Melqart. This isn't telling me what the average Carthaginian or even the average Phoenician looked like! The Phoenicians are already known to have influenced populations across the Mediterranean, but what is less known is that they were influenced by various groups too, preferably the inhabitants of the Nile Valley (the Egyptians) and the inhabitants of the Aegean (the Greeks). The Phoenicians borrowed minted coins or commissioned the production of minted coins in their colonies and foreign lands. They adapt such coins in a wide variety of ways common in the Mediterranean, but their adaption is undoubtedly Greek in nature! To say that these coins represents the average North African is like me saying that these coins represents the average Lesbos Islander: https://www.icollector.com/GREEK-COINS-ISLAND-OF-LESBOS-Twelfth-billon-about-520-480-B-C-Bi-0-90-g-Head-of-an-African_i8744782
I mean, the inhabitants of Lesbos designed coins of Blacks, does that mean that the average person on the island were Blacks?!!
quote:How they portrayed their gods:
So your showing me how the locals of Ibiza, Spain portrayed their “Hellenized” Phoenician Gods? Ok! Speaking of Ibiza….
“The origin of the Punic population of Ibiza has been a much debated issue, not only in the field of anthropology, but in archaeology as well. The establishment of rural settlements and the apparent demographic growth throughout the island, especially from the 4th century BC onwards, has been mainly recognised as the result of a colonization process involving a large-scale immigration of people. The material culture from this period seems to indicate that the probable origin of these immigrants was the area of the Central Mediterranean, especially Carthage. This paper compares measurements from Ibizan skulls dating from between the sixth and second centuries BC with craniometric data from modern American populations by employing the forensic discriminant functions of the FORDISC 2.0 (Ousley and Jantz, 1996) computer program. In spite of the method’s limitations, the results seem to suggest the presence of several individuals of North African and sub-Saharan ancestry in Punic Ibiza.”
Speaking of which, can you explain to me why the Greeks portrayed their three most important Gods, Hera, Aphrodite, and Hermes as Blacks, since the Phoenicians portrayed some of their Gods as Whites?
Do you have information about where these sarcophagus are from? Not that it matters anyway, I just want to make sure what i’m looking at. Especially because of quotes like these….
“Leucosyri, to distinguish them from the people from beyond Taurus, which bear also the name of Syrians, but who, compared to the cistauric populations, are to have the dye browned by the heat of the sun, while those do not have it, difference which gave place to the denomination of Leucosyri.”
Strabo Geography 12:3:
“....the populations of the one and other Cappadoce, Cappadoce Taurique and Cappadoce Pontique, even nowadays, are often called Leucosyri or White Syrian, by opposition apparently to other Syrians known as Melanosyri or Black Syrians, who can be only the Syrians established across Taurus, and, when I say Taurus, I give to this name his greater extension, I prolong the chain until Amanus.[Antioch]."
Strabo Geography 16:1:2
"Long ago, after Noah, Blacks inhabited our country: they went up as far as Morocco until from Syria came the first white conquerors: they were light skinned men with grey eyes."
Source: La tradition chez les Ida Aghzeinbou
If you didn't know, the Greeks often differentiated the inhabitants of the Levant in terminologies like Melanosyri (Black Syrians) and Leucosyri (White Syrians). The Melanosyri were seen as the aboriginal inhabitants of the Levant, while the Leucosyri were seen as the newcomers or immigrants of the Levant. The Greeks considered the Phoenicians to be the Melanosyri.
quote:How italians portrayed hannibal:
Sir, there are no visible representations of Hannibal Barca or even his kin. The infamous bust found in Capua, Italy was mistakenly taken to be Hannibal. Multiple scholars have promoted this bust as being the only depiction of the “Enemy of Rome”, but there isn't any real evidence to suggest this. People blindly believe that this bust is Hannibal, without considering the following….
“This bust was found in Capua, Italy and is promoted as being Hannibal. The primary issue is not that this isn’t an image of Hannibal (most likely). The issue is that they completely ignore ancient historical perspectives to paint the viewer a picture. Francis Pulzky, a noted iconographer says that this is not a sculpture of Hannibal but simply”….
“the ideal representation of a hero.”
-Francis Pulzky
So the bust is not Hannibal, especially if it was found in a foreign country!
Now the official position of one of the primary researchers on this topic is from Colonel Hennebert, and he says:
“There exists no really authentic portrait of Hannibal.”
quote:Also in ancient times the word "Aethiops" was used by greco-roman scholars to describe any black population and they never used it for north africans.
The Greek word "Aethiops" was a vague term applied to any “Black” population, but often with an unofficial geopolitical context! The Greeks first applied the word to the inhabitants of the Levant and parts of Asia Minor, this eventually changed when the Levant began to experience demographic change. They then applied it to parts of the Nile Valley and the Sahara, realms where the Greeks didn't have a clear geographic definition for! Overall, they often used Aethiopia to describe all of the inhabitants of Northern Africa, parts of the Middle East, and South Asia, thus the region why Libya, parts of Mesopotamia, and Arabia was considered Western Aethiopia and Southern Iran and India was considered Eastern Aethiopia. So yes, the Greeks and Romans did use the term to describe North Africans, while limiting the term to other Blacks from undefined geographical borders! Historically the borders of undefined” Aethiopia was Southern Libya and Southern Egypt. Also, for you to say that the Greeks and Romans never applied the term to North Africans, when the Nubians, an unmistakable Black African population in North Africa was described as being Aethiopian is really historically dishonest to say the least. Practically all Aethiopians mentioned by the Greeks were from North Africa, so how can you say that the Greeks and Romans never applied it to North Africans!
quote:About moroccans I didn't find any information about your source and I'm a french speaker...
Well, you probably didn't even know where to begin your research. Here is an article in relation to the above quote, that speaks about 19th Anthropologists racial classification of North Africans, in the French tongue of course.
“Oh, it's outdated and racist against North Africans!” You know, i’m not surprised that you are so concerned over old quotes like these because these are the type of resources that gets people hooked on. Though, I must admit that I only picked up this little quote a while back. I can't remember what the website was called, but the quote also reappears on one of Quora’s threads about the Moors. What surprises me is that you seem to not see extremely old quotes like these….
"The blacks are more numerous than the whites. The whites at most consist of the people of Persia, Jibal, and Khurasan, the Greeks, Slavs, Franks, and Avars, and some few others, not very numerous; the blacks include the Zanj, Ethiopians, the people of Fezzan, the Berbers, the Copts, and the Nubians, the people of Zaghawa, the Moors, Sind and India, Qamar and Dabila, China (Southeast Asia), and Masin, the islands in the seas between China (Southeast Asia) and Africa are full of blacks, such as Ceylon, Kalah, Amal, Zabij, and their islands, as far as India, China (Southeast Asia), Kabul, and those shores."
Source: Al-Jahiz (776-869): Al-Fakhar al-Sudan min al-Abyadh (Superiority Of The Blacks To The Whites)
Hmmm, I wonder why? Maybe it just to clear, especially if it by a self described Black man and one of Islamic Golden Age’s greatest Scholars!
quote:but what he's saying is right some black populations have been natives to some part of the sahara and miscegenation happened a lot of times and this phenomena was amplified by the trans-saharan slave trade as you can see here :
No dude, he’s saying that Moroccans were originally a majority Black people and they became increasingly mixed over time! He’s detailing Blacks in the Sahara because they are distinct and relatively isolated, but also widespread! He’s describing the spectrum within North Africans and the various features are present among them! That's why he says that Dark Moors are another variation of the same race! He’s not of the allusion that the Whites that are present among the North Africans are aboriginal to the region! And they weren't a product of Slavery! You see, people like you always want to talk about how North Africans are diverse and that the region was was always exclusive, but you never want to shed any light on Black North Africans, maintaining that they were always “Slaves” and that their history was mostly a product of Slavery. You people would talk about the Trans Saharan Slave Trade and it's significant impact on North Africa, if it had such a major impact on the inhabitants of the inhabitants of North Africa, but continually remain silent about the Eurasian Slave Trade. You deny any demographic shift ever happened in North Africa, unless it fits your narrative in putting yourselves in North African history, which is why you go all the way back to prehistory to leech on the Paleolithic inhabitants of the Near East and North Africa, failing to realize that none of these people even looked like you in the first place. You see, when it comes to North African history everyone, including North Africans themselves, are in denial to things that involved recent demographic decline caused by an influx of Eurasian “immigrants”, but are so accepting to a recent influx of Sub Saharan “immigrants”, oh I mean Slaves, since you probably of the assumption that people South of Sahara never migrated out of Africa or North of the Sahara and were prone to be brought in chains. You rather believe North Africans were always light and became dark through intermixing with their “Black” Slaves. But, when to mixing in general, the irony is that there really wasn't mixing; or its just that people put too much emphasis on it in discussions such as this. What most people do not know is that parts of North Africa, preferably the area of Northwest Africa(Morocco/Algeria) was sparsely populated in Ancient and Medieval times. People are quick to forget that Iberian Muslim converts from were expelled and flooded the coastal part of Northern Africa. Non-Black immigrants soon outnumbered the aboriginal inhabitants. To give you an example Christian renegades (Spanish, Italian, French, Albanian, etc. who would eventually convert to Islam) and the medieval slave trade had a major impact on places like Tlemcen, Oran, Bejaia (Bougie - Kabyle central) and especially Alger. Jacques Heers argues in "Les barbaresques" (2001, pg 227) at the time of Turkish rule in Algeria, 50% of the population in the capital was composed of European/Christian slaves (even Italian slaves by the seventeenth century). Saqalibas from the Balkans were also well represented. Besides, Arab excursions displaced many of the ancestral populations of the Maghreb between the 12th-15th centuries. Its a huge Eurocentric myth that Africans/blacks were the largest amount of slaves during that period when sources like this state….
"Except for the Zanj (Swahili Slaves) from lower Iraq, no large body of blacks historically linked to the trans-Saharan slave trade existed anywhere in the Arab World...The high costs of slaves, because of the risks inherent in the desert crossing, which would have not permitted such a massive exodus...In this connection, it is significant that in the Arabic iconography of the period, the slave merchant was often depicted as a man with a hole in his purse. Until the Crusades the Muslim world drew its slaves from two main sources: Eastern and Central Europe (Slavs) and Turkestan. The Sudan only came third."
So there you have it, Blacks during the period of the Moors (Crusades) were a minority when it came to the Slave Trade. However, when it came to White/Europeans, they were literally EVERYWHERE in the Muslim world as Slaves to a point where Slavonic people from Eastern European were associated with Slaves. Thus the word “Slave” comes from Slav which you should already know. But more importantly, according to this article MILLIONS of white Christian Europeans were enslaved and flooded Northern Africa.
A million Europeans enslaved
An American historian says that more than a million Europeans were enslaved by North African slave traders between 1530 and 1780, a time of vigorous Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal piracy.
The number of white European slaves is only a fraction of the trade that brought 10 million to 12 million black African slaves to the Americas over a 400-year period, historian Robert Davis says, but his research shows the slave trade was more widespread than commonly assumed. The impact on Europe’s white population was significant.
“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature — that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” said Mr. Davis, an Ohio State University professor.
“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland.”
In a new book, “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800,” Mr. Davis calculates that between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by pirates called “corsairs” and forced to work in North Africa during that period.
The raids were so aggressive that entire Mediterranean seaside towns were abandoned by frightened residents. “Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe.
“Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”
The pirates, sailing from such cities as Tunis and Algiers, raided ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children, he says. They were put to work in quarries, in heavy construction and as oarsmen in the pirates’ galleys.
Mr. Davis calculated his estimates using records that indicate how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.
“It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”
The Translator of Leo Africanus, Robert Brown mentioned -
"The many European races, including the Vandals under Genseric, and the endless European slaves who, turning renegade, became absorbed into the population must have left their mark over the all the Barbary states.”
Source: (Brown, 1896, p. 203)
According to Robert Davis Tripoli, was “occasionally reportedly crowded with large numbers of Greek slaves."
Source: (Davis, 2003, Christian Slaves Muslim Masters, White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800.p. 112)
So there you have it. European Slaves played a big role in the demographic shift in an already sparsely populated region of the World. Anyone, denying the impact of the European slave trade on Northwest Africa is only being in denial. Not only that you also have the fact that a large amount of Muslim Converts in Iberia were expelled to North Africa.
“By 1614 every last Morisco was gone, and Islam disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula. Going from over 500,000 people to zero in 100 years can only be described as a genocide. Indeed, the Portuguese Dominican monk, Damian Fonseca, referred to the expulsion as an “agreeable Holocaust”. The effects on Spain were grave. Its economy suffered greatly, as a large part of the labor force was gone, and tax revenues dropped. In North Africa, Muslim rulers attempted to provide for the hundreds of thousands of refugees, but in many cases, were unable to do much to help them. The Moriscos of North Africa spent centuries trying to assimilate into society, but still kept their unique Andalusian identity.”
“To this day, neighborhoods in major North African cities boast of their Morisco identities and keep alive the memory of Muslim Spain’s glorious past. They remind us of the illustrious history of the Iberian Peninsula, as well the tragic story of their expulsion from their homes in the one of the greatest genocides Europe has ever seen.”
The expulsion of Muslims from Spain was so bad that some considered it genocide and it is still felt today. But hey... Let the Eurocentrics tell it and the Northwest African population always looked the way they did. This is why we start seeing pale skinned Berbers in large frequencies around the 15th and 16th century. This is where we see the bulk of the Eurasian admixture. It's clear that Blacks were far than being a minority in Ancient times as you can see here….
“subsaharan population affinities in living Maghrebans as being solely the result of the medieval transsaharan slave trade; it is clear that this is not the case. Furthermore, the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste."
Source: (S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990)
quote:Also I've never denied that there were some blacks in NA
Oh, I was never of the assumption that you thought Blacks didn't have a place in North African History, rest assured. Oh no, you just think that we were just in the background serving you and your mixed race Ilk, contributing little if anything to the region, and never rising beyond the limits of Slavery and Servitude. We were just there as you people say, small and influentially insignificant. See, people like you think your giving us a bag of trinkets, trying to find a false balance between “Afrocentrists” in general and the extreme fringe of Eurocentrism, “Nordicists”. Basically saying cliche things like “North Africans are neither Black or White”, or “Some were Black, some were White, and others were in-between”, and “North Africans have always looked this way”, all the while establishing your olive skinned selves as the greatest representatives of all North Africans, but maintaining the darker and Black North Africans as being nothing but descendants of Slaves. Yeah no, Ancient North Africans weren't “mixed” and they certainly didn't look anything like you.
quote:...there are multiple mentions of blacks mercenaries in the carthaginian armies or in south tunisia for example but they were not berbers or viewed as such and they were a very tiny minority like today.
Well, if that be the case, then you should be able to identify these “Black” Soldiers that were recruited in the Carthaginian, Roman, and Arab armies then. Maybe you will be able to explain why a handful of Mediterraneans, Northern Europeans, and and Middle Easterners made no mention of these “Black” Soldiers ethnic or national background and assume that they were “Berbers”....
How about Alfonso X, the ruler of Castile, Galacia and Leon during the 13th century. Let's see what group of people he these Black foot-soldiers in?
"All the Moorish soldiers were dressed with silk and black wool that had been forcibly acquired… their black faces were like pitch and the most handsome of them was like (as black as) a cooking pan."
Oh my, this can't be correct, it seems that he described the “Black” foot soldiers as Moors. Gee, I wonder why he would confuse these Black guys as Moors and say the Moors were Black? Probably an exaggeration statement.
What about the Seafaring “White” Danes (Vikings)? Let's see how they described the Moors….
"They attacked Nekur off the coast Morocco. There was fierce fighting with the Moors but in the end the Vikings were victorious, and many of the "Blue-men," as they called Moors, were ultimately carried off prisoners to Ireland, where we hear of their fate the Fragments of Irish Annals.”
Source: Cambridge Medieval History
Hmmm, this is strange. Why would the Vikings call the Moors “Blue Men”? I wonder….
“These were the blue men [fir gorma], because Moors are the same as negroes; Mauritania is the same as negro-land (literally, the same as blackness).”
Source: Early sources of Scottish history, A.D. 500 to 1286
“Norse sagas describe Africans as "Blaumenn" (blue men)”
“Negroids and some "Moors" were called "blue-men" in early Irish-Norse Chronicles”
Well maybe this was only the troops, let's see how they described the Medieval Moroccan population….
"After this the Lochlanns (Danes) passed over the whole country, and they plundered and burnt the whole country and they carried off a great host of them as captives to Erin and these are the blue men of Erin, for Mauri is the same as black (Nigri) man and Mauritania is the same as blackness. Long indeed were these blue men in Erin…"
Source: Early Intercourse Between the Franks and Danes, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1, pp. 18-61
Oh my! Well, they were quite serious when they described the Moors as Black. But how does this fit in today's scholarship? They probably discredit such narratives anyway. Let's see, shall we….
Coat of Arms of Sardinia. As with the heraldry of families named with variants of Mori or Moor, several countries in Europe have flags and coat of arms with the heads of Moors on them. Military historian, Yaacov Lev in the article , “Army Regime and Society in Fatimid Egypt” (1987) wrote of Nasir Khusroes of the 11th century who speaks of the "20,000" Masmuda men that made up part of the Fatimid troops in Egypt in his time saying, “Masamida were Berbers from the Western Maghreb. Nasir-i Khusrau, however, says that they were blacks and characterized them as infantry who used lances and swords”
Source: (from International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19(3), 337-365)
I wonder why would these modern Scholars say such a strange thing? There probably all delirious.
Corippus, a Byzantine in Book I, 245 of Johannidus, Book 1, 245, speaking of Moors in the area of North Africa who he felt had "faces of a horrible black color" stated, “Maura videbatur facies, nigro colore horrida” Michell, G.B. (1903, Jan.). The Berbers. Journal of the Royal African Society, 2(6), (pp. 161-194). He also refers to some Moorish captives as "black as crows."
"The Moors have bodies black as night, while the skin of the Gauls is white..."
Source: The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, translation by Steven A. Barney, published 2007. p. 386
Moors are so named because “they are black, and their blackness comes from the heat of the sun”….
Source: (9.2.121-23)” (Ramey, L., 2008)
Marcus Valerian Martial was one of the earliest Europeans to use the phrase “woolly hair like a Moor” also translated "a Moor with his crisp hair"
Source: Book 6 of "The Epigrams
"A striking proof that the word Moor was, as among the Germans at this time, exactly equivalent to negro, is not only its use as applied to the curly-haired, thick-lipped Aaron in Titus Andonicus, but also the constant interchange of the two words as applied to the equally unmistakable negro Eleazar, in Lust's Dominion."
Source: Elmer E. Stoll, Shakespearean scholar
Well, all of these quotes seems to maintain that the Moors were Blacks! But these are all descriptions of the commoner, clearly the Moorish elites and rulers weren't described in such a way….
Description of Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Eleventh century Sultan of Almoravid Dynasty:
According to medieval Arabic writers, Yusuf was of average build and stature. He is further described as having "had a clear brown complexion and he had a thin beard. His voice was soft, his speech elegant. His eyes were black, his nose was hooked, and he had fat on the fleshy portions of his ears. His hair was curly and his eyebrows met above his nose."
Even Wikipedia agrees with this stuff! That's it, I give up!
Oh, I almost forgot! Here is a little something about the Carthaginians recruitment of “Black” Soldiers….
“To what extent Carthaginians employed Negro slaves is doubtful. Punic cemeteries have yielded numerous skulls of a negroid character, and there were some very dark-skinned Africans, perhaps negroes, in the Carthaginian army which invaded Sicily early in the fifth century B.C. Frontinus tells us that as prisoners they were paraded naked before the Greeks soldiery in order to bring the Carthaginians into contempt. On the other hand, as the Carthaginians customarily enslaved prisoners of war and the victims of their piracy, two sources of supply which they must have found very fruitful, they were far from being dependent on Africa for slave labour. It is unlikely that they hesitated to enslaved as many Berbers as they required, nor were so brutal a people likely to have drawn the line at doing the same to their own peasantry. The evidence of negro blood, is, however, significant and it seems probable that they imported slaves from the Fezzan. It was a likely source, for the Garamantes cannot have hunted the Troglodyte Ethiopians except to enslave them. The slave trade with the Fezzan may have been important to the Carthaginians, but there are no grounds for assuming that it was.”
Source: The golden trade of the Moors: West African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, By E. W. Bovill, Robin Hallet, pp. 21-22
“In the Punic burial grounds, negroid remains were not rare and there were black auxiliaries in the Carthaginian army who were certainly not Nilotics. Furthermore, if we are to believe Diodorus(XX, 57.5), a lieutenant of Agathocles in northern Tunisia at the close of the fourth century before our era overcame a people who skin was similar to the Ethiopian. There is much evidence of the presence of 'Ethiopians' on the southern borders of Africa Minor. Throughout the classical period, mention is also made of peoples belonging to intermediate races, the Melano-Getules, or Leuco-Ethiopians in particular in Ptolemy.”
Source: General History of Africa: Ancient civilizations of Africa By G. Mokhtar, Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa, p. 427
quote:As for archeological documents and testimonials : from herodotus's trip in egypt -->After this man the priest enumerate to me from a papyrus the names of other Kings, three hundred and thirty in number; and in all these generations of men eighteen were Ethiopians, one was a woman and the rest were men and of Egyptian race. so clear distinction between "ethiopians" and egyptians.
“Race”, as we understand it today, was not the same to the Ancients. Ancients like the Greeks, thought of race as being limited to your regional background and your nationality. The idea of “race” however, was not subjected to just your complexion or particularly features indiscriminately in some cases. Herodotus is making a distinction between the Egyptians and Aethiopians “racially”, but his people's version of race is based on regional associations and doesn't have much to do with the absolute appearance of the two “groups”. He’s saying that there were Aethiopian rulers of Egypt and that's about it. He did not detail on how both of these two groups were any different. The historical records shows how both the Egyptians and Aethiopians were described and how deeply connected they were with each other….
“There can be no doubt that the Colchians are an Egyptian race. Before I heard any mention of the fact from others, I had remarked it myself. After the thought had struck me, I made inquiries on the subject both in Colchis and in Egypt, and I found that the Colchians had a more distinct recollection of the Egyptians, than the Egyptians had of them. Still the Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are black-skinned and have woolly hair, which certainly amounts to but little, since several other nations are so too. But further and more especially on the circumstance that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times”.
Source: Herodotus, The History of Herodotus By written 440 B.C.E. (Translated by George Rawlinson, Publication date 1909)
The Ancient Egyptians were said by the Greek historian Herodotus to be “melanchroes with curly hair”. The meaning of the Greek word melanchroes in recent times has been contested and redefined to mean dark or tanned or olive skinned Caucasians. Tan by definition is a pale tone of brown. The name is derived from tannum used in the tanning of leather. The first recorded use of tan as a color name in English was in the year 1590. But, if we examine the word in the manner in which the ancient Greeks used it, we are left with no doubt that the word melan (Black) chroes means “Dark Brown” or “Black”, not “Tan” or “Gold”. The root word for melanchroes is melas or melan, which “Black”, from mid 19th century, melas, melan equals “Black”. Melanchroes - dark brown or black pigment found in animal bodies, 1832, Modern Latin, with chemical suffix - in (2); first element from Greek melas (genitive melanos) "black," probably from a PIE root *melh- "black, of darkish color" (source also of Sanskrit malinah "dirty, stained, black").
Even with first hand accounts by actual Greek eyewitnesses (who cannot be confused with or labeled “Afrocentrics”), is scrutinized and reinterpreted by racially biased people today. As if these men did not have eyes to see and did not understand what they were writing descriptively….
Dr. Sally Ann Ashton on the controversial interpretation of the words “woolly and melanchroes”:
“Many readers will be familiar with another quote from Herodotus (Histories 2:104) that makes reference to the appearance of the people of Kemet having dark skin (melanchroes) and curly (often translated as “woolly” on account of the word “oleos”)”.
“The use of a term to describe the hair that includes the word for wool would suggest that the hair of the ancient Egyptian people was textured and different from that of the Greeks.”
The fact that the term melanchroes covers a variety of dark skin colours as pointed out by Lloyd, supports that argument that the people of ancient Kemet were indigenous African people, and that they represented the variance that we find amongst African people today”.
African Physical Diversity
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone. Manilius, Astronomica 4.724
Huh, funny. From, what's being said, Manilius is describing the Aethiopians as being darker than the Indians, and the Indians being darker than the Egyptians, ok, that's fine. No news there. The Aethiopians were always denoted to being the darkest people of all of Mankind and especially more darker than the Egyptians. I mean they weren't wrong, just look at the Nilotic peoples of South Sudan, who are the most probable representatives of the Greeks Aethiopians. However, sadly for you, you fail to realize that he is no way saying that the Egyptians weren't Black! Only confirming that they are lighter compared to the Aethiopians and Indians. Why this obsession with using strawman arguments to make your points, you do understand that most Blacks aren't literally “Black”, but comes in almost all shades of “Brown”, without “racial” intermixture of course. Anyway, I did a little research on this quote and it seems that Manilius was listing all the Blacks of his day. Without the above two of his listing are inaccurately distorted. Here’s is the entire quote in it’s accuracy….
“Aethiopes maculant orbem tenebrisque figurant perfusas hominum gentes; minus India tostos progenerat; tellusque natans Aegyptia Nilo lenius irriguis infuscat corpora campis iam propior mediumque facit moderata tenorem. Phoebus harenosis Afrorum pulvere terris exsiccat populos, et Mauretania nomen oris habet titulumque suo fert ipsa colore.”
“The Ethiopians stain shadows shape the world pouring men nations; India, choking less breadth; Egyptian Nile floating earth a polished and well-watered fields are heavy bodies already more midst of a moderate wording. Sun sandy powder African countries up people and call Mauritania the title of the mouth has a very color of his own mind.”
Apparently Manilius also listed the fairest of people in the World.
“Idcirco in varias leges variasque figuras dispositum genus est hominum, proprioque colore formantur gentes, sociataque iura per artus materiamque parem privato foedere signant. flava per ingentis surgit Germania partus, Gallia vicino minus est infecta rubore, asperior solidos Hispania contrahit artus. Martia Romanis urbis pater induit ora Gradivumque Venus miscens bene temperat artus, perque coloratas subtilis Graecia gentes gymnasium praefert vultu fortisque palaestras, et Syriam produnt torti per tempora crines.”
“For this reason various laws and various shape the arrangement of the kind of men, individual colors forming peoples, the rights of the limbs sociataque and materials to be a match for a private treaty with him who is sealed. Blonde huge rise in Germany and delivery; France is at hand, stained with shame to take the less, Spain solids drastic nature of the limbs. He put on the mouths of the father of the city of Mars by the Romans, Venus is very well Gradivus, mix the limbs, and by the subtle colors of Greeks He prefers a strong expression of exercise training Syria and tortured by the time they discover their hair.”
Source: MANILIUS ASTRONOMICON 4.711-730
Manilius seems to place the Egyptians complexion between the Indians and the Saharans (North Africans), while he places the Greeks complexion between the Syrians (most likely the Northern Syrians) and the Romans. This seems to establish that the Ancient Egyptians were far from being “ Fair” or “Swarthy” and were much closer to the Aethiopians complexion than the Greeks, therefore they were still Black. Only a couple shades lighter than their Aethiopian and Indian counterparts, but a couple shades darker than their Syrian, Greek, and Romab counterparts. Basically they were the third darkest people in the World. Here is Manilius list of the darkest and lightest nations in the World in order….
“Aethiopes, India, Aegyptia, Afrorum, Mauretania, Syrium, Graecia, Roma, Hispania, Gallia, Germania” By the way, I got this information from these two threads….
quote:The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically. Arrian, Indica 6.9
Again, a differentiation is made, but he is not establishing the Egyptians as being a “Fair or rather an “Olive” skinned hue. I hope your not one of these people who thinks that the fair skinned Punjabis were the ones being described as the average Northern Indian skin tone or thinks that all North Indians are fair skinned. That's even worse!
Examples of Manilius’s Eastern Aethiopians….
“North India”
Man sitting alongside the Ganges River, Garhmukteshwar, Uttar Prades
“South India”
Man from India at Brihadishvara temple, Tamil Nadu
Examples of Manilius’s Western Aethiopians….
“Egypt”
Upper Egyptian man at west bank, Luxor, Egypt
“Aethiopia”
Sudanese man in Wadi Halfa, Sudan
quote:As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in color, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians. Strabo, Geography 15.1.13
"I assert that the ancient Greeks, in the same way as they classed all the northern nations with which they were familiar as Scythians, etc., so, I affirm, they designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries toward the ocean."
Source: Strabo, Geography 1.2.26, The Geography of. Strabo published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition , 1917
quote:Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, by the fountain of the sun. Xenpohanes (Hesoid, works and says, 527-8)
Undoubtedly a mistranslation. The Translator most likely replaced the Greek word “Aethiopes”, or Aethiopians with “Black”. On the plus side, here is an interesting quote by the same man….
“the Ethiopians as black, and the Persian troops as white compared to the sun-tanned skin of Greek troops.”
Source: Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments, Xenophanes, J. H. Lesher, (2001)
quote:It was a market place to which the Ethiopians bring all the products of their country; and the Egyptians in their turn take them all away and bring to the same spot their own wares of equal value, so bartering what they have got for what they have not. Now the inhabitants of the marches (Nubian/Egyptians border) are not yet fully black but are half-breeds in matter of color, for they are partly not so black as the Ethiopians, yet partly more so than the Egyptians . Flavius Philostratus: c.170 to c.247,
I was afraid something like this would happen. There's not a lot of information about this quote authenticity, as it appears sadly. However, that's not to say most of the quote is distorted! Lucky for you, I made a thread a month ago on Egyptsearch Reloaded in response to this mysterious description. Here is what was found….
Tukuler take of the quote:
He’s most likely describing the skin cline that is apparent in Northeast Africa, which is Indigenous by the way. Here's an example of what he might be talking about….
So not much reliable in disproving the Ancient Egyptians were Black, sorry!
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
To be continued....
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:The word "mauri" was an ethnonym used for north-west africans and comes from the punic word "mahurim" which means "westerners" (because they lived west of carthage) (https://www.persee.fr/doc/bmsap_0037-8984_1903_num_4_1_7671) so It had nothing to do with "black" or dark skin also don't confuse it with another term "blackamoor" which was an artistic movement.
So your just going to ignore what I previously posted as being the etymology of “Moor”? Alright fine. Let's look at the Greek word “Mauros” and it's true meaning….
μαύρος
Noun μαύρος = black, raven, Negro, nigger αράπης = nigger, black, Arab, Negro Νέγρος = Negro, nigger, black
Adjective μαύρος = black, colored, sable, pitchy, coloured σκοτεινός = dark, obscure, dingy, murky, shady, black μαυρισμένος = black άσχημος = ugly, nasty, unsightly, seamy, homely, black άγριος = wild, feral, fierce, savage, ferocious, black δυσοίωνος = sinister, ominous, inauspicious, portentous, pessimistic, black
Verb μουτζουρώνω = black, smudge, smut αμαυρώνω = darken, tarnish, stain, black δυσφημώ = disparage, discredit, vilify, defame, denigrate, black
Previous post
"North African, Berber, late 14c., from Old French More, from Medieval Latin Morus, from Latin Maurus "inhabitant of Mauretania" (northwest Africa, a region now corresponding to northern Algeria and Morocco), from Greek Mauros, perhaps a native name, or else cognate with mauros "black" (but this adjective only appears in late Greek and may as well be from the people's name as the reverse). Being a dark people in relation to Europeans, their name in the Middle Ages was a synonym for "Negro;" later (16c.-17c.) used indiscriminately of Muslims (Persians, Arabs, etc.) but especially those in India"
For you this may seem as an exciting victory, but article actually establishes that the Amazigh were Black. This is the article’s first sentence, by the way….
“The ancient Maures [Moors] were indeed had skin complexions black as coal or brown as wood or tree bark complexion(s) and color(s)”
The Website seems to be heavily embedded in the topic of the Moors. Here are a couple of their articles that breaks down the racial element associated with the Moors, enjoy!
By the way, the term “Blackamoor”, “Blackamoore”, “Blackamore”, and “Blackmoor” derives from the old phase “Black as a Moor”.
quote:here famous moorish king:
Now, what gives you the idea that King Juba II isn't Black? Because he has wavy to straight hair? The guy’s features practically gives it away and debunks your fantasy of “Mediterranean” North Africa!
Bust of Juba II
You see, during the Greco-Roman era many people across the Mediterranean were “Hellenized” and eventually “Romanized” in most aspects of their culture. The elites in North African societies were great admirers of Greco-Roman or regional “Mediterranean” cultural influences, partially because they were subjected to regional “Mediterranean” rule by the Seafaring Phoenicians. They adopted wardrobes of the Mediterraneans and even hairstyles, which again explains Juba’s haircut. Despite this particular look, Juba still displays peculiar features that is not typically “Roman” in nature to a certain degree, particularly wide nostrils and blubber lips. Even though his bust can't display what kind complexion he really had, the description of his people by foreign visitors however can….
Procopius of Caesarea differentiating the Maurentanians from White settlers.
“And I have heard this man say that beyond the country which he ruled there was no habitation of men, but desert land extending to a great distance, and that beyond that there are mennot black-skinned like the Mauretanii, but very white in body and fair-haired.”
Source: History of the Wars, Books III.xxv.3-9; IV.vi.10-14, vii.3, xi.16-20, xiii.26-29
quote:I can post thousands of evidence like these ones
Well that's fine. I’ll just post a million more sources debunking and contradicting your “evidence”.
quote:but i will finish this answer by showing a genetic study who show that guanches ( who were isolated from most foreign invasions) were identical to modern north africans : Our results show that the Guanches were genetically similar over time and that they display the greatest genetic affinity to extant Northwest Africans, strongly supporting the hypothesis of a Berber-like origin
Only one problem, the Guanches were not predominantly North African in origin nor were they the only ones on the Islands….
“Pope Eugene IV Against the Enslaving of Black Natives from the Canary Islands January 13, 1435”
“Some six decades before Columbus set out for the new world, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of black natives from the Canary Islands. This 1435 papal command demanded the European slave-masters to release them within 15 days or face the weight of excommunication from the Church.”
“Juan de Bethencourt became the first European to settle in the Canary Islands and made slaves of several natives heralding the beginning of the black slave trade. At this time slavery had been practically eliminated in Europe, thanks to the influence of the Church. The Holy Roman Church later would not only condone and support slavery even of those baptized into the Roman Catholic Church but also would hold their own slaves. Europe, led by Spain, would begin over four centuries of slave trading that included some twenty million Africans alone, of which half died in transit. Jewish children deported from Portugal during the Inquisition settle Sao Tome e Principe, two islands 320 kilometers west of Gabon. It then became a transit point for the slave trade. Pope John Paul II (1978 - ) in 1992 deplored the Roman Catholic Church's condoning of that sad offense to human dignity.”
Here is a nice quote by another Egyptsearch member detailing something similar to this….
quote:On this site we have discussed the East African origin of Berber language speakers going back many years. But beyond that the issue has always been the sampling locations of populations along the coasts of North Africa as the epitome of all North Africans at any time depth. And because of the exposure of these populations to non African gene flow over time, that has become the basis of the "sub saharan" vs "north African" genetic divide due to skewed sampling. Of course the U6 DNA lineages, being the most dominant in Northwest Africa, have been assigned a "Eurasian" origin, therefore, there has always been an issue on geographic labels for ancient African DNA. So until the assignment of these labels to these ancient lineages changes and we get better aDNA from Africa, there is no "indigenous" non SSA African genetic lineages in North Africa..... This is precisely why I refrain from using the term especially when it comes to ancient African DNA. Until we find more aDNA from Africa at greater time depths than currently available, we will not be able to get a proper picture of the population movements and patterns of North African history. It is obvious that the Sahara has had an impact on this history, but the idea that "indigenous" Africans did not and have not settled in and traveled across the Sahara, albeit in relatively small numbers, does not make sense. Yet this is what this whole "eurasian back migration" theory imposes on North African history. And the only way to find these ancient signs of small sized population sites around various oases across the Sahara and North Africa is to do greater DNA sampling outside of the extreme coasts of North Africa and to find more of these ancient settlement sites near oases, lakes and springs. Not only that but there are significant settlement sites in the Central and Southern sahara that are hardly ever used when it comes to ancient or contemporary North African DNA. Just because North Africa has been sparsely populated since the last wet phase, doesn't mean that no "indigenous African" lineages were not present. Of course the only exception to the rule of sparse populations in North Africa is the Nile Valley which would have supported much larger population settlements as we see from Ancient Egypt and predynastic population settlement patterns. But even here that whole false dichotomy of 'sub saharan' vs non existent 'north African indigenous' DNA still exists.”
How this fits into Canary islanders goes more into how and when the first settlers arrived in the islands. Currently it is theorized that the canary Islands were settled somewhere around 1000 BCE from the nearby African coast. The only reason this was in question, is because the currents in the area do not provide a direct route to the islands. But otherwise it shouldn't be a shock that this is the case. And therefore the DNA of the Canary island first settlers falls into generally the DNA of North Western Africa as part of "Berber" DNA even though Berber as a language is not a DNA lineage.
Tyrannohotep, i’m sorry for taking this thread to another topic.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
For those wondering where I have been, I was at a family gathering. I just got on Egyptsearch yesterday planning to post more pictures in my “Depictions of Ancient Middle Easterners and Aegeans” thread, but instead I decided to address this guy’s post. I spent all day making these previous posts in dedication to this guy’s opinion about Ancient North Africa. If anyone is interested in seeing brilliant pictures of Ancient Middle Easterners go to this thread.
Carnotaurus sastrei, a medium-sized theropod dinosaur of the abelisaurid family, sprints through the jungles of South America during the Late Cretaceous around 70 million years ago. Equipped with thick tail muscles attached to its thigh bone, Carnotaurus may have been one of the fastest non-avian dinosaurs yet discovered, with a top speed clocking between 30 and 35 miles per hour. This would have helped this predator chase down its prey across the prehistoric landscape.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This traveling warrior and her pet hyena are on the run across the dry and dusty plains. What could they be fleeing from?
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a sketchbook doodle of a prehistoric chick in the process of throwing a spear. The spear’s flint head is inspired by those manufactured by the Clovis culture of North America between 11,500 and 11,000 years ago (even if the character herself is obviously not Native American).
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
What if some genetic engineering company decided to apply their technology in the market of cosmetics? It’d probably be expensive as hell for their customers, but they could still make a killing with all the genetically modified “upgrades” they’d offer. All the plastic surgeons would be green with envy!
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Portrait of an ancient Egyptian queen, drawn in the distinctive Egyptian style of course. I used a faux Egyptian papyrus illustration on my wall as reference for this, although I did not want to copy it exactly.
Posted by MuCongo (Member # 23119) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: What if some genetic engineering company decided to apply their technology in the market of cosmetics? It’d probably be expensive as hell for their customers, but they could still make a killing with all the genetically modified “upgrades” they’d offer. All the plastic surgeons would be green with envy!
LOL when an Imp puts on Kelly Rowland's face. That's how they trick a man into fucking a lizard.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
The subject of this stylized portrait is Hammurabi, the Amorite warrior king of Babylon who laid down one of the most influential law codes in Middle Eastern history. This time, I tried to emulate the art style of the Babylonians, as well as the Assyrians who would dominate the region of Mesopotamia (now known as Iraq) well after Hammurabi’s time.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
She is the Lady of the Jungle, and she has the spear and mighty steed to prove it!
This was my way of celebrating my 30th birthday today. I feel it sums me and my artistic career up pretty well, if I don't say so myself.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
I drew this line art of a woman with a longbow entirely within the Procreate app on my iPad. Not a fan of how wobbly some of the lines turned out, but I am proud to have taken on the challenge nonetheless.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
These would be three female characters’ faces which I drew with cartoon-style proportions (e.g. big eyes). I find the one at the top to be the most seductive, though I also like how the other two came out.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This sketchbook doodle of an Allosaurus is meant to show the dinosaur’s “cracked”, crocodile-like texture of the facial integument in greater detail. As always, those dots on its snout are meant to represent tiny sensitive bumps like those you find on crocodilians’ faces.
Posted by MuCongo (Member # 23119) on :
^ Nature of the Reptilian Beast! It's sense of smell and taste is different...
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
These two princesses, mounted on their war dinosaurs, are jousting in the jungle that grows between their rival kingdoms. Because if there’s one thing more awesome than a warrior babe riding a dinosaur, it’s two of them fighting one another!
If you don’t recognize the dinosaurs our heroines are riding, they are supposed to be the tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus and the spike-frilled ceratopsian Styracosaurus.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Today I'll post a "throwback" artwork I did back in 2017, since the topic of how the earliest European AMH would have looked came up in a recent ES thread.
Sometime around 40,000 years before present, this Upper Paleolithic woman (Homo sapiens) is weathering the wintry cold of Pleistocene Europe. Although she has inherited most of her physical features from her African ancestors around the time they settled Europe, you may notice she has green eyes as foreshadowing for her people’s eventual evolution into modern “white” Europeans.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a facial portrait of Tianyuan Man, an early modern human (Homo sapiens) who would have lived in northeastern China between 42,000 and 39,000 years ago, making him among the first modern humans to occupy the region of East Asia. Identified from 34 bone fragments found in the Tianyuan Cave near modern Beijing, he and his people would have been related to the ancestors of modern Asian and Native American people. Isotope analysis of these remains suggests that Tianyuan Man’s hunter-gatherer community would have eaten a lot of freshwater fish back in their time.
Posted by MuCongo (Member # 23119) on :
^ what's his name again? Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This T-shirt design stars the Kushite warrior queen Amanirenas, who reigned between 40 and 10 BC and is known for her war against the mighty Roman Empire. A shirt or dress with this printed on would be more than suitable gift for the headstrong woman in your life!
Deep in the Amazonian rainforest waddles Glyptodon, a herbivorous armadillo as big as a small automobile. These massive armored mammals would have roamed South America until 11,000 years ago, so the first Native Americans to migrate into the continent would have encountered and maybe even hunted them.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
The woman portrayed here represents a population of early Homo sapiens whose remains have been uncovered at the site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. Dated to around 300,000 years ago, their fossils may be the oldest assigned to the modern human species thus far. However, the braincases of the Jebel Irhoud people’s skulls have a longer, lower shape than those of humans today, a characteristic considered more “archaic” in paleoanthropology.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Somewhere in Africa circa 70-50,000 years ago, a band of early modern humans (Homo sapiens) wanders far and wide in search of new foraging grounds. Their travels might even take them outside the continent, therefore announcing the species’s colonization of the rest of the habitable world.
Although there is evidence of shorter-lived dispersals out of Africa by Homo sapiens before 100,000 years ago, it is the one that took place between 70 and 50 kya to which everyone living outside of Africa today can trace the majority of their ancestry.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Today I'd like to do a little throwback to this depiction I did of Rama and Sita, the leading man and lady from the Hindu epic known as the Ramayana. Their appearance is supposed to be "Australoid" like that of the Indian subcontinent's aboriginal pre-Aryan inhabitants. Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
I did this simple sketchbook doodle of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of war, to kill time at my local library. Drawing women as seen from the back like this can be at once challenging and fun. Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of war, charges into battle brandishing a pair of nunchaku. I know nunchucks aren’t really an ancient Egyptian weapon, but they’re cool, so who cares?
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
And this would be a colored version of my nunchuck-wielding Sekhmet: Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
These sketches are all themed around Homo erectus, an ancestor of human beings which would have evolved in Africa around two million years ago. They would have been the first hominins to use fire for cooking, although they probably had not developed our capacity for language or art yet. And, while they would have used stone tools, they probably did not make any clothes!
When drawing the full-body view of the female Homo erectus, I was unsure how human or ape-like her body would appear. However, all the online sources I could find said that Homo erectus’s body proportions would have been similar to a modern human’s, so that’s what I went with.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
A little less than two million years ago, a female Homo erectus walks across a grassy field with a stone handaxe in her grip. Handaxes, also known as bifaces, were primitive stone tools that human ancestors such as H. erectus would have used for chopping and cutting substances such as meat, tubers, wood, and bark. They would have been the progenitors to our knives, axes, and bladed weaponry.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This early Homo sapiens woman has found a doting friend in the form of an African wildcat (Felis lybica) she has adopted.
The historical consensus is that our modern house cats descend from African wildcats that were domesticated in the Middle East during the Neolithic Revolution, about 10,000 years ago. But since these cats are native to Africa, where modern humans first emerged, I wouldn’t be surprised if the friendship between people and cats went even further back. Maybe it was the cat, rather than the dog, that became humanity’s first best friend?
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a colored-pencil portrait of the tyrannosaurid Thanatotheristes degrootorum, the fossil remains of which were uncovered from the Foremost Formation in Alberta, Canada. It would have hunted other dinosaurs in the subtropical forests and wetlands of that region between 78 and 77 million years ago, and it seems to have been most closely related to another medium-sized tyrannosaurid called Daspletosaurus.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This would be Dihya al-Kahina, the Zenata warrior queen who fought the Arab invasion of North Africa, in "chibi" style! I know it's a bit of a weird idea, but I was real hungry for inspiration when I came up with the concept.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a view from the back of Dihya al-Kahina, the Zenata warrior queen of ancient North Africa, which I did with my set of colored pencils.
When I was getting started as an artist, I used to color exclusively with colored pencils before moving on to digital methods. I think digital coloring looks better in general, but there’s still a bit of fun to be had in using old-fashioned media for a change.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This is a character I designed for a commission I received from a Facebook correspondent, who wanted a new logo for her “Ahosi Beauty” company (it’s named after one of the terms for the warrior women of pre-colonial Dahomey in West Africa). It turned out that she was asking for a much simpler design than this, but I didn’t want my original conception to go to waste. So, here it is for your enjoyment.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
On an overcast day in the Late Jurassic Period around 150 million years ago, these Giraffatitan brancai are browsing for coniferous foliage to satisfy their immense herbivorous appetites. Giraffatitan was a close relative of the North American Brachiosaurus, but it was native to Africa. Even by the standards of Jurassic sauropods, these dinosaurs would have been immense, possibly weighing over 85 tons!
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Amanitore was another one of the Kentakes (ruling queens) of the kingdom of Kush, in what is now northern Sudan. She reigned as co-regent alongside a man named Natakamani between 1 BC and 25 AD. Much of her activity was that of a builder and restorer of temples and other monuments, as Kush would have been recovering from a violent war the Romans fought against her predecessor Amanirenas. Nonetheless, the kingdom returned to prosperity quickly during her reign, with agriculture and the iron industry in particular flourishing.
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
This prehistoric huntress might be stalking her prey, or alternatively sneaking past a predator which could hunt her in turn. In the savage world she inhabits, one can never be too wary or too stealthy…
Posted by Tyrannohotep (Member # 3735) on :
Time for another throwback piece! This is an illustration I did to symbolize the fact that people of European descent can trace almost a third of their ancestry to migrations out of Africa AFTER the initial “Out of Africa” migrations. I explain how this came to be in my essay “Why Europeans are Almost 1/3 African” (read it on my blog here).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Mustafa Azemmouri (1500-1539 AD), alternatively known as Estevanico, was an enslaved “Moorish” man from Morocco who is remarkable for being one of the first enslaved individuals of African descent to have stepped on North American soil. In 1527, he came along on a Spanish expedition of conquest that brought him from Florida through Texas all the way to northern Mexico. It was a dangerous venture, with treacherous terrain and conflict with various Native American groups taking their toll on the expeditioners until only Estevanico and three other men were left to complete the journey. On another expedition that lead him to New Mexico, Estevanico died during a confrontation with the local Zuni people, who may have confused him with a malevolent magical being in their religion called the Chaikwana.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This towering edifice would be a ziggurat, a structure of mudbrick that the Sumerians, Babylonians, and other peoples of ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Kuwait) would erect for use as temples. Together with the pyramids and other tombs of the Nile Valley, these would have been among the earliest examples of monumental architecture anywhere in the world.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Archaeopteryx lithographica, a feathered dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of Europe, has been touted as one of the earliest birds ever since its fossils were discovered in the 19th century. However, there remains uncertainty over its exact relationship to modern birds, with one study in 2011 suggesting it would have been more closely related to the dromaeosaurid and troodontid dinosaur families than to birds proper. Regardless of its classification, it would have lived as a carnivore or insectivore on what was then an archipelago of islands with a relatively dry climate and low-growing shrubby vegetation.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
With this spunky spearwoman, I wanted to play with a different style of digital rendering than my usual. I rather like how she came out looking like a character from the old “Samurai Jack” cartoon, which I loved as a kid.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
While exploring a mysterious jungle oasis where lifeforms from the Middle Cretaceous Period still persist, this ancient Egyptian expedition has bumped into a hungry Carcharodontosaurus! Will their bronze and copper weaponry be enough to fend off the massive meat-eater? Or will they try to capture the beast for the Pharaoh’s menagerie?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be my interpretation of Mowgli, the Indian "man-cub" from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, with his melanistic leopard friend Bagheera. I have to be honest, I remember being disappointed in the story when I read the original Kipling work a few years back, but I do like some of the adaptations it has inspired (such as the live-action remake Disney did in 2016). You could say Mowgli is the Indian prototype for Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
When your mission is to take out a rogue Giganotosaurus with only your hunting bow, you might want to invest in some poison for your arrows. And then aim for the brain or the heart!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Around 1900 BC, an Egyptian expedition has crossed the Mediterranean and is exploring the land that will someday be known as Greece. Unbeknown to them, the native inhabitants are watching them with every bit the same degree of curiosity…
This isn’t meant to represent an actual historical event, but rather a fictional “what if” scenario. That said, the ancient Greeks did have a few legends about Egyptians settling on their shores, and these would be the inspiration behind this artwork.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Between 68 and 66 million years ago in North America, this Triceratops is chomping away at some low-hanging lianas. I think the hooked beaks and shearing teeth of ceratopsian dinosaurs such as Triceratops would have come in handy for processing fibrous and woody vegetation such as these vines.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This Moorish warrior is swinging about a formidable scimitar forged of the famously tough and resilient Damascus steel. Despite being named after the Syrian capital city, this type of steel actually originated in India before it spread into the Islamic world.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This character was originally going to be a random woman with a whip. However, while drawing it, I thought back to how the 2004 Catwoman movie with Halle Berry drew a connection between the character and the ancient Egyptian goddess Bastet. It may not have been that good of a movie, but I can credit it with inspiring me to turn my heroine into an Egyptian version of Catwoman!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
2,500 years ago in the countryside along the Sudanese Nile, these Kushite workmen have harnessed an elephant’s strength to help them carry logs for construction. This is admittedly a speculative scenario on my part, but there is evidence that the people of Kush kept African elephants in stables, possibly for war or ceremonies, at the archaeological site of Musawwarat es-Sufra. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to imagine them using elephants as beasts of burden the way that Indian and Southeast Asian cultures have traditionally used them. Many centuries later, the Belgian imperialists in the Congo would also use native elephants for this purpose for a brief period.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Night has fallen upon this jungle-swathed region on a moon which orbits a giant gas planet. As you can probably guess, some of the inspiration for this concept comes from fictional jungle moons like Yavin IV in the Star Wars movies and Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar. I wonder what life would be like on such a moon?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrait of Mut, a "Mother Goddess" figure from ancient Egyptian mythology. Her name literally means "mother" in the ancient Egyptian language, and as the wife of the solar/creator god Amun-Ra, she rose to prominence in the national pantheon during the Middle Kingdom. She's also the patron goddess and mentor for my protagonist Itaweret in my upcoming novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony".
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
High up in the jungle trees, our warrior heroine is fighting a predatory Kaprosuchus, a terrestrial relative of crocodiles and alligators. (In real life, Kaprosuchus would have lived in Africa around 100 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous Period. But this is of course a fun fantasy picture.)
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
If any single animal deserves to be called “king of the jungle”, it is probably the tiger rather than the lion. After all, unlike lions, tigers actually do live in jungles (though their range also extends to grasslands and temperate forests elsewhere in Asia).
Anyway, it was the Netflix documentary series Tiger King that inspired me to draw this. The show was unfortunately more interested in the human drama than anything else, but the poor animals are the real victims in that mess.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This character would be the high priestess in a fantasy culture that venerates the Tyrannosaurus rex as a godlike symbol of power, much as cultures in our world have venerated apex predators such as the jaguar or lion. Trust me, you don’t want to have that sacrificial knife of hers going through you!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a spunky warrior princess from ancient Kush, drawn with the physical proportions of an animated Disney princess. There actually is a Disney stage musical called Aida with a Kushite princess as the title character, but it’s more of a tragic love story than anything else and I don’t think she is a warrior like my character here.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Bistahieversor sealeyi was a meat-eating dinosaur of the tyrannosaurid family that would have hunted in what is now New Mexico around 74.5 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. With a weight in excess of three tons and a body length approaching thirty feet, it would have been a fairly large predator, albeit significantly smaller than the famous T. rex. Of course, the hide pattern I gave this animal is inspired by the modern jaguar.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This woman would be a Queen of the Mangbetu, a Central African people who established a number of kingdoms in what is now the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Kongo during the 18th century AD. I realize her pet leopard is quite large and heavily built for its species, but I needed the queen’s hand to be able to reach down to its shoulder while she was standing.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
I had this weird dream in which I caught the COVID-19 coronavirus. Inside of me was this miniature city of cells like the one in the early 2000’s animated film Osmosis Jones, and the virus took on the form of this anthropomorphic, rather curvaceous villainess with a seductive African-American accent. Think of her as being a female equivalent to Thrax from that movie.
For real, though, be sure to stay safe and healthy in these troubled times!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
If you look across this forest clearing in Late Cretaceous North America, circa 66 million years ago, you can see a pair of Triceratops milling about. Some inspiration for this composition came from the work of paleoartist Douglas Henderson, who excels in creating lush environments for his dinosaurs to dwell in.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be another piece of concept art for Itaweret, a strong-willed priestess of Kemetian (ancient Egyptian) descent who is the protagonist of my upcoming alternate history/fantasy novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony". To sum up her story without spoiling anything, Itaweret hails from a Kemetian colony called Per-Pehu on the coast of Greece, and she must liberate her people from enslavement after the warlike Mycenaeans sack her hometown. I've already finished and done a few revisions for the novel's first draft, so it should be ready for publication soon!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is cel-shaded concept art for two more characters from my upcoming alternate history/fantasy novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony". The young man would be Philos, an Achaean (Bronze Age Greek) shepherd boy who volunteers to help the Kemetian (ancient Egyptian) priestess Itaweret on her quest (and has the hots for her, although these sentiments start out unrequited since she sees his people as primitive and barbaric). He has as his companion a tame lion named Xiphos, whose faint spots are an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric European "cave lions" with whom his ancestors interbred.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Raised by gorillas deep in the rainforest of Central Africa, this woman will fight to the death to defend her adoptive family and their homeland.
The biggest challenge in creating this was getting the gorillas’ anatomy as accurate as possible. Their overall anatomy is similar to that of human beings (they are our closest relatives after chimpanzees and bonobos, after all), yet they differ from us in their proportions and postures.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Today I found out that an academic publication titled "Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World" cited my old DeviantArt page as a source! I got to say I'm very honored to have attracted such attention from the academic community!
On a spooky night under a full moon, this poor young woman is experiencing a transformation of prehistoric proportions. Such is the price to pay for going out on the Night of the Were-Saurus!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This fierce, watchful warrior mermaid would be based on the Zulu culture of South Africa. The bottom half of her body is that of a great white shark, like those that hunt the Cape fur seals along the South African coastline.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
The crocodyliforms of Cretaceous Africa are not all that impressed with Spinosaurus aegyptiacus’s aquatic adaptations.
Seriously, Spinosaurus these days is starting to look less like a typical theropod dinosaur and more like a big croc with a sail. Ah well, that’s science marching on for you.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These two would be soldiers from opposite sides of the American Civil War (1861-1865), one of the bloodiest wars ever fought in the history of the United States of America. My favorite part of drawing this was differentiating the two soldiers through their emotional expressions in addition to the obvious contrast in uniform color. I feel it helps represent the causes each side fought for.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is a book cover I designed for my recently completed alternate history/fantasy novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", using various pieces of concept art I created for the characters and story. The woman in the middle of the composition is my protagonist Itaweret, an Egyptian priestess, and the two guys behind her are her brother Bek (right) and the Greek shepherd boy Philos (left). The city at the bottom is the titular Egyptian colony of Per-Pehu on the Greek coast.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
After partaking in a battle out in the rocky desert, an Egyptian warrior brandishes his blood-stained khopesh while roaring out his victory cry.
I saw a short documentary on Youtube about forging a khopesh sword like those used by the ancient Egyptians, and it made me want to draw this scene. At the video’s 8:32 time mark, they actually featured one of my earlier drawings, which I found very flattering!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a little piece of concept art for a "cowgirl" sort of character from the Old West. I think I will call her Plano Penelope, in honor of the suburban town of Plano in Texas where I went to kindergarten.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These two characters of mine would be a two-woman team of bounty huntresses who operate throughout the American West during the 1870s. The African-American woman to the left goes by the nickname Plano Penelope (real name Penelope Jenkins) whereas the Native American woman to the right is her Wichita partner Dawn Beaver.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
150 million years ago, Allosaurus fragilis surveys its hunting grounds atop some rocky outcroppings on the Jurassic savanna. This was something I created to unwind after a particularly rough week in an already rough year.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my contribution to that “Sailor Moon redraw” fad that was buzzing on social media in late May of 2020. Of course, I had to make my take on Sailor Moon look more Japanese than the character’s original “Nordic”-looking design, since she is from Japanese cartoons.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Every so often, I draw a portrait of a woman and wonder what to do with her. Who is she, and where is she from? What culture and time period might she represent? Questions like those inform what sort of attire I give her. This time, however, I decided to leave my subject without any clothing, jewelry, or hairstyle that might identify her with any particular time or place, or link her with any group of people. She could be anyone from anywhere and any time. She is, simply, beauty unadorned.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
100,000 years ago off the coast of South Africa, a daring early human huntress (Homo sapiens) confronts a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) which has been menacing her shoreline community.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It's a hot day on the African plains circa 200,000 BC, so you could say this early Homo sapiens woman is dressed for the occasion!
That's part of the fun of drawing prehistoric humans. In most circumstances, you get to make up their outfits (or lack thereof).
At the dawn of humanity, an early artist paints an image of the creator deity she believes him. Some say that humanity was created in the image of God, but perhaps instead it was humanity that created God in our own image?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is a colored-pencil portrait of a young prehistoric woman. She could be from any period of human prehistory, but I was thinking of the earliest days of the modern human species (Homo sapiens) around 300,000 years ago.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my take on the iconic and oft-parodied “March of Progress” illustration depicting human evolution. You might have noticed that most replications of this sequence use male subjects to represent each species, so I thought it only fair to show the other, female half of this evolutionary journey for my version.
From left to right, the species shown are Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens (our species).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a portrait of a random princess or other female nobility from ancient Egypt. Those dreadlocks she’s wearing may not necessarily be her natural hair, as it was customary for upper-class Egyptians to shave their heads and wear wigs as a sign of status (and to protect their natural hair from head lice).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This drawing depicts my concept for a hypothetical hominin species that would be descended from Homo heidelbergensis, the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. They would be more closely related to the Neanderthal and Denisovan lineage than to ours, but they would have stayed behind in Africa while the Neanderthals and Denisovans colonized Eurasia. Think of them as being like an African version of Neanderthals.
As such, they would be physically stronger and have a more carnivorous diet than us, rather like their Neanderthal and Denisovan kin, but they wouldn’t be as well-adapted to cold climates as the latter.
(This is not a real species that has been discovered, mind you, just a speculative one from my imagination.)
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is concept art for a character named Oja, the protagonist of an upcoming story of mine set in eastern Africa around 100,000 years ago. She is the intended heir to the chieftainship of Ori Zam, her native village, but her brash desire to make herself worthy of that status often gets her into trouble. When her antics get her inheritance taken away from her, Oja must find a new home and a new purpose in the treacherous world her people inhabit.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Here's another concept art for Oja of Ori Zam, the protagonist of a story I've been working on that is set in Africa around 100,000 years ago. This was a surprisingly difficult pose for me to draw, as it took three tries to get it to look the way I wanted.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
A male Tyrannosaurus rex escorts one of his hatchlings on his head as a sort of playful father/son bonding experience.
Basically something I did to celebrate Father’s Day this year. Here’s to all the devoted dads of any species out there!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These would be two supporting characters from my story about Oja of Ori Zam, which is set in prehistoric Africa around 100,000 years ago. From left to right, they are Uru and Namak, and both of them are Oja’s lifelong best friends. Generally speaking, Uru is the most level-headed and diplomatic of the three, whereas Namak is the most aggressive.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
In North America around 66 million years ago, a solitary bull Alamosaurus sanjuanensis holds his long neck high in search of a potential mate. Alamosaurus would have been the last of the giant sauropod dinosaurs to roam the North American continent, living at approximately the same time as the famous Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.
By the way, the scenery for this artwork was inspired by a viewing of the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, specifically the scenes set on Isla Nublar during the first act.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
An ancient Egyptian woman receives a visit from a winged cobra spirit, possibly the goddess Wadjet, and kneels before her in reverence.
I originally intended this artwork to go on a face mask which I would sell on Redbubble, but I had trouble getting the whole design to fit on the mask. Nonetheless, I’m rather proud of my emulation of the Egyptian artistic style here.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This portrait depicts a modern Muslim woman of African descent in a traditional hijab. Although it originated in Arabia, Islam spread into Africa shortly afterward in the 7th century AD. In modern times, nearly one third of the world’s Muslims live in Africa, where they constitute about forty percent of the population. In some African cultures, Islam has been syncretized with indigenous religions to the point where people may practice both Islamic and native customs.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a face mask design modeled after the bone-crushing jaws of Tyrannosaurus rex. The tiny bumps you can see on its face are sensory organs similar to those on modern crocodiles and alligators, which are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs like T. rex (after birds, of course).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It's Throwback Thursday again! This is a drawing I did on 11×17” Bristol paper back in 2018, which depicts the ruins of a lost civilization deep in the rainforests of Central Africa’s Congo Basin. The civilization in question is my fictional invention, of course, but I imagine it would have been built ~3,000 years ago by a Bantu-speaking people who had commercial and cultural links with the ancient Egyptians and Kushites.
By the way, that big gemstone atop the obelisk near the upper left corner is supposed to be a really big diamond.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commissioned artwork starring one of the Barbary corsairs, North African pirates who terrorized the Atlantic and Mediterranean between the 16th and 19th centuries AD. They're most infamous for enslaving large numbers of European Christian captives, though they would also prey on Jews as well as "pagan" peoples of coastal West Africa. They even got into a couple of fights with the United States under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 19th century.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
“Come, thou mortal wretch, With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool, Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak, That I might hear thee call great Caesar Ass Unpolicied!”
—Cleopatra VII, Queen of Ptolemaic Egypt (69-30 BC), as quoted from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is a pencil drawing of a hoplite (soldier) from ancient Sparta, which is probably the most famous of the classical Greek city-states after Athens. The Spartans’ reputation for military prowess and courage has endured to the present day, but while the film 300 portrayed them as fighting on behalf of freedom and justice, they in fact developed their entire gung-ho warrior culture to keep their enslaved population (known as the helots) in line.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This portrait shows a male specimen of Homo naledi, a hominin species which lived in southern Africa between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. It would have been contemporaneous with some of the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens), but Homo naledi itself had a number of “primitive” characteristics such as an apelike face and a hand morphology adapted to climbing trees (although its feet were more like those of a typical bipedal hominin). Therefore, I went with a more apelike take in depicting this species, but I gave it kinky “Afro” hair to represent its close evolutionary affinity with modern human beings.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrait of Dilophosaurus wetherilli, a meat-eating theropod dinosaur that hunted in North America 193 million years ago during the Early Jurassic Period. Contrary to certain cinematic portrayals, there is no evidence that Dilophosaurus could spit venom or had an expandable frill. What it did have were powerful jaw muscles that would have helped it kill its prey, which may have included fish and other aquatic organisms as well as other dinosaurs.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is Oja, my prehistoric heroine character, drawn in another cartoony style. This time, the stylistic inspiration came from the work of animator Vivienne Medrano (aka "VivziePop"), who is behind the online cartoon "Hazbin Hotel".
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It’s a simple doodle of a prehistoric woman (as in early Homo sapiens) wearing her dreadlocks in a ponytail.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Today I'll do a throwback post to this portrait I did of everybody's favorite Jewish Palestinian, Jesus of Nazareth! Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrait of Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare. She makes an appearance in my upcoming novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", wherein she aids the main antagonists by spying on our heroes in owl form. In Greek literature such as the Odyssey, she was repeatedly described as having gray eyes, which I interpreted here as a luminous silver to give her that supernatural quality.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This giant snake wants to challenge the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex for the title of Late Cretaceous apex predator. Personally, my money is on the dinosaur, but you have to admire the serpent’s gumption here.
The snake isn’t based on any particular fossil taxon, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if something like it were to be found in Mesozoic sediments someday. We already know some crocodiles and their relatives, such as Deinosuchus and Sarcosuchus, grew big enough to prey on dinosaurs. Why not snakes as well?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415 AD) was a female philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who worked and lectured at the University of Alexandria in Egypt (then a province of the Eastern Roman Empire). Despite the misogynistic prejudices that prevailed during her time, she nonetheless won respect as a brilliant academic by her contemporaries as well as later historians.
Unfortunately this did not save her from the wrath of fanatical Christian monks who had her dragged by her chariot down the street, stripped naked, beaten to death, and then burned. Some historians believe that Hypatia’s death marked a tragic end not only for a woman of her intellect but for the intellectual tradition of science and philosophy which she represented, hence while it has been called “the end of classical antiquity”.
Posted by Ish Geber (Member # 18264) on :
Your skills are getting better. Good job.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish Geber: Your skills are getting better. Good job.
Thanks, Ish!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This portrait shows a female specimen of Homo erectus, an ancestor of humanity which would have evolved in Africa around two million years ago (although some populations of this species would afterward migrate into southern Eurasia all the way into Indonesia). If her eyes appear a little high up her face, that’s because her braincase is lower than that of modern humans, giving her the appearance of a lower forehead.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
A warrior of the pre-colonial Philippines roars out a cry of exultation atop a tree bough overlooking the island’s jungle. Did you know that Filipino cultures used to practice ritualized headhunting? They also had a thing for tattooing their bodies, similar to related Austronesian peoples such as the Polynesians.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
For Throwback Thursday this week... Kushite horsemen ride their white-coated steeds towards battle in the sandy wastes of the eastern Sahara. A scene like this would probably take place during the Meroitic period (280 BC to 350 AD) of Kush’s history, because the chariots that both Egyptian and Kushite armies had once employed would have become obsolete by that point. Regardless, it appears the Kushites had developed an even stronger passion for horses than their Egyptian brethren, as shown by horse burials in their royal tombs as well as Assyrian records mentioning the importation of horses bred in Kush.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These raptors are hungry for the fresh Italian cuisine that just arrived in their neighborhood! Of course, they’ll have to get through the tough “lorica segmentata” packaging first.
The raptors here aren’t supposed to be any particular species, but they are inspired by larger species such as Utahraptor, Achillobator, and Dakotaraptor.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Ever wondered what would have roosted in caves before bats evolved?
Enter this speculative concept for a cave-dwelling pterosaur. As far as I know, something like this hasn’t been discovered yet, but maybe it will be found sometime in the future.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These Arab huntsmen have ventured to a remote island in the Indian Ocean to procure horns from the local Sinoceratops population. Alas for them, they have only succeeded in aggravating one of the beasts with their arrows…and one of the island’s natives is watching them.
This was inspired by an aborted 1970s film project titled “King of the Geniis”, which had Sinbad the legendary sailor stumble upon a lost world of dinosaurs. One of the guys working on it was none other than the stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen himself. Pity the movie never got off the ground!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrait of Nubia, an Amazonian superheroine from DC Comics. My understanding is that she’s a twin sister to Diana, the “default” Wonder Woman (if you’re wondering how that works, well, Amazons in the DC universe are supposed to be made from clay). I hope to see her represented in the DC cinematic universe (or alternately their cartoon universe) someday!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This meditating woman represents one of the so-called Negrito peoples, an assortment of dark-skinned humans who would be the aboriginal inhabitants of southern and southeastern Asia. Examples of Negrito ethnic groups include the Andaman Islanders, the Semang and Betak of Malaysia, the Maniq of Thailand, and the Aeta of the Philippines.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
On the banks of the Zhujiang River in southern China, a mother Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) exchanges affectionate strokes on the trunk with her offspring. We normally think of elephants as native to India and Southeast Asia rather than China, but they once roamed China as far north as the province of Henan before the 14th century BC, with the Chinese employing them as beasts of war until the 970s AD. Today, a small population of elephants persists in China’s Yunnan province near the border with Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, a Notiomastodon platensis reaches for some chewy lianas. Notiomastodon was one of the last members of a family of elephant cousins known as the gomphotheres (or Gomphotheriidae). It would have roamed the continent of South America between 800,000 and 11,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
For "Throwback Thursday" this week, here is my portrayal of two African love divinities, Hathor (left) and Oshun (right)! Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This warrior babe would be a random character I drew to keep myself productive during a dull afternoon. It seems that, whenever I'm lacking for inspiration, warrior babes are a reliable subject for me to default to.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a pin-up artwork of Dihya al-Kahina (d. 703 AD), the Zenata warrior queen and prophet who fought to defend her North African people against Islamic Arab invaders in the late seventh century AD. I don’t think we know for sure how “hot” she would have been at any point in her life, but these pin-ups are fun to do regardless.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Have you any idea how snowy it is in the Aures Mts near the Mediterranean coast of Algeria where the Jerawa-Zenata lived?
I know this ain't no historic/cultural accuracy forum so forgive this intrusion of further Jerawa ethnicity and movement.
quote: Fez was founded by Idris I before 790. His son Idris II established his capital there and attracted a large number of Jews to the town, both autochthonous and Oriental. It is accepted that many of these Jews were Jerewa-Zenata, driven from the Ores by the Arab armies.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Have you any idea how snowy it is in the Aures Mts near the Mediterranean coast of Algeria where the Jerawa-Zenata lived?
I'll just say that she's in her summer dress in my pictures.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
You wouldn’t want to get on this warrior’s bad side. She’s dual-wielding double-bladed swords. I dunno how practical such weapons would be in real life, but it sure looks badass!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
I wanted to play with a new set of colored markers, and this ancient Egyptian queen’s bust was the result of that. Stayed tuned for more marker art like this!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
More fun with my new markers…this one would be a random African “tribal” girl.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And here’s a bust of a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex, colored with my new set of markers.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Itaweret, the protagonist of my recently completed novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", adopts a defensive posture with her Scepter of Mut. Having drawn the character so many times before, I felt it was time to depict her in a more action-packed pose.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Throwback Thursday has returned, so here's a piece from early 2018...
This woman is a shaman from the Natufian culture, which occupied the Levantine region of the Middle East between 12,500-10,000 years ago. They would have lived as hunter-gatherers, but they appear to have settled down and built permanent villages instead of roaming the land as nomads, and they most probably were among the forerunners to the region’s earliest farmers. The woman’s “headband” is actually made of dentalium shells strung together, and the beads of her necklace would have been fashioned from bones and animal teeth; both are based on Natufian jewelry recovered from the site of El Wad in what is now Israel.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And here's a redone version of the above: Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a headshot of Edmontosaurus annectens, the last of the hadrosaurid dinosaurs to roam North America. In the past, I would have drawn this dinosaur with fleshy cheeks covering the teeth, but then I learned that it might not have possessed such cheeks after all. If this turns out to be the case, it’s a look I’ll have to get used to.
UPDATE: Edited version below. Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
"Madonna"
This portrait had two inspirations behind it. One came from assorted photos of rural African woman wearing veils or shawls on their heads. The second came from images of the “Madonna”, or Virgin Mary, with a similar head covering. You could say she is an African Madonna!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a side-view bust of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II (1304-1214 BC) in his last few years, using his mummy as reference. He would have died around the age of 90, after a reign lasting between 66 and 75 years. The hieroglyphic cartouche on his neckband here is supposed to spell out his birth name (Egyptian Pharaohs often boasted multiple names and titles during their lives, although we modern people usually address them by their birth names).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This dromaeosaurid happens to be looking at you. That is probably not good, at least as far as you're concerned.
Inspired by a recent viewing of the original Jurassic Park on the big screen. I've seen that movie so many times on video and DVD, but there's really something to be said for experiencing it on the magnified scale of a movie theater.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This artwork started out as simple posing practice. Once I gave her a hairstyle, I thought to myself, “She looks like she could be Jamaican.” So she became this stealthy Jamaican huntress. Her weapon’s blade would be inspired by the “cutlass” or machete used on Caribbean islands like Jamaica.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It's "Throwback Thursday" again! It’s a warm midday on the plains of Northwest Africa circa 8000 BC. This woman of the Capsian culture is cooling herself off with water drunk from an ostrich egg converted to a bottle.
Named for the town of Qafsah in southern Tunisia, the Mesolithic culture known as the Capsian occupied the region of northwestern Africa south of the Atlas Mountains between 8000 and 2700 BC. Traces of their culture left behind include rock paintings, jewelry made from seashells and ostrich-eggshell beads, and whole ostrich eggs converted into containers such as the bottle pictured here.
Some archaeologists speculate that the Capsian people would have represented the earliest speakers of Afrasan (or Afroasiatic) languages to colonize Northwest Africa after migrating from further southeast (that is, from the Afrasan linguistic homeland in Northeast Africa). If so, the Capsian language could have evolved into modern Berber, with its original speakers intermixing with more Mediterranean-looking people from further north (along with later colonists from Phoenicia, southern Europe, Arabia, etc.) to produce the current Northwest African population.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
On a cool autumn day 500,000 years ago, the saber-toothed cat Megantereon cultridens battles a tiger (Panthera tigris) over territory on the plains of northeastern Asia. Although people commonly call the saber-toothed cats “saber-toothed tigers”, they would have been no more related to tigers than any other felines.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It’s early in the morning on the grasslands of South America some 50,000 years ago, and this woman of West African descent is taking her tame saber-toothed cat (Smilodon populator) on a walk.
Some of the inspiration for this piece came from reports of stone tools and the remains of hearth fires being found at Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil, which possibly date back to 48,000 years ago or more. This would predate the colonization of the Americas by the ancestors of modern Native Americans by over thirty thousand years. Dr. Niede Guidon, one of the archaeologists who worked on the site, has suggested that these earlier settlers may have come to Brazil from Africa across the Atlantic as far back 100,000 years ago. If so, they appear to have left little if any genetic trace on today’s Native Americans, who would have arrived from northeastern Asia rather than Africa.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Sixty-seven million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period, the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi carries off a young Dineobellator notohesperus. The great flying reptile is probably going to feed its dromaeosaurid prey to her hatchlings.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, large pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus would have ruled the skies. When fully grown, they would have rivaled small aircraft in size, with a wingspan nearing forty feet (or twelve meters) in length.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a quick facial portrait of Aang, the young protagonist of the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. My understanding is that he is supposed to be of East Asian appearance, but it isn’t that obvious given the show’s “big anime eyes” aesthetic style. So I redrew him in my own style to make him look, well, more Asian.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Because I feel like doing another throwback today, here's an Egyptianized version of She-Ra from a couple of years ago: Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It's time for another Thursday throwback! One misty night in the late Cretaceous, the eyes of a Tyrannosaurus rex glow like twin embers. The effect is caused by a structure in the back of each eye called the tapetum lucidum, which helps the predator see even in these dark conditions. Modern crocodilians’ eyes have a structure very much like this one, and it wouldn’t surprise me if dinosaurs inherited their own version of it from the common archosaur ancestor they share with crocs.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Inspired by the "Blacktober" art movement this year on social media, here's a "black" version of the caveman Spear from Genndy Tartakovsky's "Primal" series on Adult Swim. I don't necessarily mind Spear being portrayed as light-skinned in the show, since his physical appearance seems to be based on that of the European Neanderthals, but you know I always want to see more dark-skinned hominin portrayals.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be gift art I did for a friend of mine who is writing a comic series called “The Brother”, about a time-traveling African king on a quest for redemption. The character you see here would be the king’s African-American sidekick, a woman named Imani Anderson. I think she came out looking quite spunky here.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This fierce female warrior wears the pelt of a young lioness she has slain on her first hunt. It is her duty to protect her community from the many predators that roam the savanna around them.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And for this week's "Throwback Thursday", here's my reinterpretation of Michelangelo's David from 2017:
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This couple would represent the ancestors of the Native American peoples, who would have arrived in the Americas from northeastern Asia around 15,000 years ago (back then, Asia and North America were joined by a land bridge called Beringia which has since been submerged). The spears they are wielding have points based on those associated with the Clovis culture that spread across North America between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. They would have used these to hunt big game such as mammoths, mastodons, and bison.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
A little Egyptian girl has found an orphaned young crocodile out along the Nile and wants to give it a comfortable new home. It may look adorable at first, but wait until her new pet grows up!
(By the way, kids, do NOT do this at home. Leave wild animals where they are in their natural habitat.)
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
For "Throwback Thursday" this week, here's something I did from 2017...
Sometime around 40,000 years before present, this Upper Paleolithic woman (Homo sapiens) is weathering the wintry cold of Pleistocene Europe. Although she has inherited most of her physical features from her African ancestors around the time they settled Europe, you may notice she has green eyes as foreshadowing for her people’s eventual evolution into modern “white” Europeans.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And here's a 2020 redrawing of the previous artwork!
40,000 years ago on the cold steppes of Pleistocene Europe, a woman of the Aurignacian culture takes a walk within sight of two woolly mammoths. The Aurignacian was an Upper Paleolithic culture that first emerged in the Middle East 47,000 years ago and then spread into Europe, where it lasted until 33,000 years ago. Its appearance and dispersal can be traced to the migration of modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa into western Eurasia. Notice that although this woman retains most of the physical features of her African ancestors, her blue eyes may be foreshadowing her descendants’ evolution into the “white” people of Europe.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Mira, a female character who appears in an episode of Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Primal” that is titled “Slave of the Slave Scorpion”. To sum up her story without spoiling critical plot details, she and her people were captured and enslaved by another nation until she escaped and found herself in Spear and Fang’s company. You can’t see it from this angle, but she has a scorpion tattoo on the back of her head that I presume was a brand her enslavers put on her.
Some people have gotten an ancient Egyptian vibe from Mira due to her shaven head and the aforementioned scorpion motif, but her name appears to be Arabic rather than Egyptian, and she in fact speaks Arabic in one scene where she explains her backstory. So I went with a Middle Eastern rather than ancient Egyptian look for her.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a digital painting of Itaweret, the ancient Egyptian priestess of Mut who is the protagonist of my upcoming novel “Priestess of the Lost Colony”. The picture is actually a collaboration between me and another artist named Kimberly Moseberry (she did the underlying line art and I did the colors and shading).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Itaweret, the ancient Egyptian priestess who is the protagonist of my upcoming novel “Priestess of the Lost Colony”, throws up her fist and declares that Black Lives Matter!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period, the megalosaurid Torvosaurus gurneyi prowls a semitropical jungle in search of prey. Reaching lengths between thirty and thirty-six feet and weighing up to five tons, Torvosaurus was among the largest predatory dinosaurs of its day. Its fossils have been found in both North America and the European country of Portugal.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Over 100,000 years ago on the African plains, this shaman is retiring to her private enclave where she will commune with the spirits. The period of human prehistory she represents is known to archaeologists as the Middle Stone Age (280-50,000 years ago), and it covers the period when the species of modern humans (Homo sapiens) and their culture developed in Africa prior to dispersing throughout the world. Think of it as the time our species grew up within its African cradle.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And now for a different type of art...
This is a colorization I did of the Narmer Palette, an ancient Egyptian siltstone palette dating to the 31st century BC. It is commonly interpreted as recording the Upper Egyptian king Narmer’s conquest of Lower Egypt, which led to the country’s unification under the First Dynasty (it is important to note that Upper and Lower Egypt refer to the southern and northern regions of the country, respectively). The program I used to colorize this was Photoshop CS6.
Posted by Ish Geber (Member # 18264) on :
^Beautiful coloration.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
You have a very marketable item there in either poster or fake relic form. Patent and sell ... before somebody else does.
quote:Originally posted by One Third African: And now for a different type of art...
This is a colorization I did of the Narmer Palette, an ancient Egyptian siltstone palette dating to the 31st century BC. It is commonly interpreted as recording the Upper Egyptian king Narmer’s conquest of Lower Egypt, which led to the country’s unification under the First Dynasty (it is important to note that Upper and Lower Egypt refer to the southern and northern regions of the country, respectively). The program I used to colorize this was Photoshop CS6.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Thanks, you guys!
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Agreed. Wow! I like it!
You have a very marketable item there in either poster or fake relic form. Patent and sell ... before somebody else does.
I really wish I could, but it seems wrong for me to sell something that's a simple colorization of a photographed image I found on the Internet (this is where I found it, BTW).
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Judging by the Sandle Bearer looks like you used an authentic image. Ya know Egyptians are selling paint on papyrus copies of the original AE art.
Now no I'm not recommending you fake certificates of authenticity though PT Barnum would say if fool believes a modern work is authentic AE charge 'em for it.
I commend you for your conscious. Are you really American? Capital over all!! <<hehheh>>
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Anyway...
This would be a quick little portrait of an Egyptian Pharaoh looking all pissed off. To be honest, I drew it to reflect my own irritated mood at the time (don’t worry, it was nothing serious, just some stupid Internet drama).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Judging by the Sandle Bearer looks like you used an authentic image. Ya know Egyptians are selling paint on papyrus copies of the original AE art.
Now no I'm not recommending you fake certificates of authenticity though PT Barnum would say if fool believes a modern work is authentic AE charge 'em for it.
I commend you for your conscious. Are you really American? Capital over all!! <<hehheh>>
On second thought, since the photo of Narmer's palette that I used for my colorization appears to be in the public domain, it may be OK for me to sell a poster based on it. Stay tuned!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
My poster based on the Narmer Palette is now for sale on Redbubble!
Your improvements to the original allow you intellectual property copyright, eh?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
11,000 years ago in the far south of what will someday be Turkey, a tribal priestess performs a rite of prayer to her people’s ancestors at the temple known as Gobekli Tepe. Characterized by massive T-shaped pillars set in earthen walls, this archaeological site is of special interest because the people who erected it appear not to have developed agriculture yet, instead still living off the land as hunter-gatherers. It goes to show that the people we stereotype as primitive can still develop complex societies and erect impressive monuments!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These would be a male and female specimen of Homo habilis, a hominin species that evolved in Africa around 2.4 million years ago. Although it retained many of the “ape-like” physical traits found in earlier hominins (such as the various species of Australopithecus), Homo habilis stands out from its ancestors by having a proportionately larger braincase, starting the transition to the big brains of modern humans (Homo sapiens). Homo habilis is also known to have manufactured stone tools of the Oldowan industry, which it would have used mainly to butcher meat from animal carcasses.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be Itaweret, the protagonist from my upcoming novel “Priestess of the Lost Colony”, dressed up as if she were a Queen of Mycenae (although she is ethnically Kemetian, or ancient Egyptian, rather than Mycenaean). There’s actually a reason for this depiction that is implied in the book itself, but it comes up at the very end and I don’t want to give it away here. I have it say it’s always fun to combine the fashions of different cultures (in this case, Kemetian and Mycenaean) like this when designing characters’ costumes.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be Itaweret, my Egyptian priestess character, in colored pencil. Her skin tone came out looking more yellowish than I would have preferred, but such were the limitations of my colored pencil selection. It’s not like digital coloring where you can pick almost any color you want, unfortunately.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
100,000 years ago on the plains of eastern Africa, a young huntress named Oja is ready to throw her obsidian-pointed spear at her prey.
Oja is another character I created for one of my novels. She would represent early Homo sapiens, the species of modern humans, which evolved in Africa before spreading across the world 70-50,000 years ago.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And now for something completely different, namely a couple of recent dinosaur pieces!
This is my reconstruction of the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen BHI 3033, better known by its nickname “Stan”. Found in South Dakota in 1987, this fossil specimen is remarkable for being the fifth most complete T. rex ever found, as well as having one of the best-preserved skulls. It is also the specimen on which the most museum replicas around the world have been based.
Unfortunately, after many years of being under the care of the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota, the original Stan has been purchased for $31.8 million by an anonymous buyer, therefore making it inaccessible for future scientific study. Such a loss for paleontology!
“In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood…and those he tasted with the bite of his jaws named him the Doom Saurian.”
Deep in the depths of Hell (as dinosaurs would have imagined it), an intrepid Tyrannosaurus rex shows that he’s more than a match for the demonic hordes!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Did you know that the ancient Egyptians made prosthetic body parts? This sketch would depict one example of these, a big toe made from three wooden pieces stitched together that was found in a necropolis west of modern Luxor. It would have belonged to a priest’s daughter who lived around 3,000 years ago, and it seems to have been designed for comfort and mobility as well as looking as naturalistic as possible.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period, a pair of Deinocheirus mirificus hang out at a wetland somewhere in eastern Asia. Almost forty feet long from head to tail and weighing up to seven tons, this hump-backed dinosaur is one of the most unusual thus uncovered. It was actually related to fleet-footed “ostrich dinosaurs” like Gallimimus and Struthiomimus, but it seems to have traded away the swiftness of its ancestors for large size and a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Both fish bones and gastroliths (stones swallowed to grind down plant matter) have been found within Deinocheirus remains, suggesting an omnivorous diet consisting of both plants and meat.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my colorization of a marble bust supposedly showing the face of Cleopatra VII, or the (in)famous Cleopatra whose reign marked the end of Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty. It was actually pretty common for sculptures made in the Hellenistic tradition like this to sport bright colors, but time and the elements have eroded most of them away.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This Nanuqsaurus hoglundi wishes you a Cretaceous Christmas!
Nanuqsaurus was a smaller cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex that lived in northern Alaska about 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Back then, Alaska and other polar regions would have been covered in temperate rainforests like those of the Pacific Northwest or New Zealand today, as it would have been too warm for permanent ice caps. However, it still might have snowed there during the winter, so I felt Nanuqsaurus would suit Christmas’s whole winter theme better than most other dinosaurs.
It’s funny, by the way, how we associate Christmas with snow and ice despite the holiday coming about to celebrate the birth of some Palestinian Jewish dude in a hot and dry area of the world. But that’s probably what would happen if you had an originally Middle Eastern religion spreading into the temperate Northern Hemisphere.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Aladdin, the famous protagonist of a Middle Eastern folktale recorded by the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. In the 18th century, the Frenchman Antoine Galland appended Diyab's telling of the story to his own translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (better known as The Arabian Nights); before this, Aladdin's story was not actually part of that volume.
In Diyab's original recollection of the folktale, Aladdin was supposed to be from China. However, all other elements of the story (such as the characters' names and the presence of Islamic djinni) betray the story's Middle Eastern roots, so I chose to portray Aladdin as a typical lower-class individual from medieval Arabia. Besides, that's the interpretation I grew up with.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And now for a totally different form of creative expression...
Check out this warrior pharaoh I designed on the HeroForge.com website!
Link Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
More fun with HeroForge! Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
On a more fantastical noe, a dinosaurian warrior! Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
And here's a concept for a dinosaurian warrior in my own style. Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Considering how often I've drawn prehistoric heroines over the years, I don't think I've ever given one that most quintessential of "caveman" weapons, the simple wooden club. Time to rectify that!
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Interesting takes on the artifacts, Brandon.
So with heroforge, is a site where you can customize your own figures via 3D printing?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Interesting takes on the artifacts, Brandon.
So with heroforge, is a site where you can customize your own figures via 3D printing?
As far as I can tell, pretty much. You design the figures on the site and then have them 3D printed and delivered to you.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Wow. I wish I had that as a kid! Creating my own figures! These kids now don't know how good they have it.
Have you thought about creating your own brand of characters/toys?
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Have you thought about creating your own brand of characters/toys?
Hmm...my own line of toys. That's indeed an appealing thought, though right now I know nothing about how toys get designed and manufactured. Might have to look up on that should I pursue that in the future.
But if we're talking ideas for toys, I have noticed there still seems to be a dearth of female action figures out there. There are plenty of female dolls like Barbie or Bratz, of course, but I understand those are mostly for dressing up. I think a line of female action figures, modeled after warrior heroines like the ones I draw, could appeal to both girls and boys. Girls would appreciate having strong heroines to play with, and boys (at least the straight ones) will...well, have their own reasons for enjoying the characters.
Anyway, here's the HeroForge version of my character Itaweret (from my upcoming novel Priestess of the Lost Colony). Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Akhenaten (born Amenhotep IV) was the Pharaoh of Egypt between 1353 and 1336 BC. He is best known for replacing the official Egyptian pantheon with a new, quasi-monotheistic religion centered around the veneration of a solar deity called the Aten. So devoted was he to this new faith of his that he seems to have neglected other aspects of running the kingdom, not to mention foreign affairs. In the end, Akhenaten became so unpopular that, after his death, his monuments and sculptures were desecrated, his name omitted from later official lists of Egypt’s rulers, and his whole “Atenism” cult driven out in favor of the traditional Egyptian belief system.
Most statues and depictions of Akhenaten from his lifetime depict him as having strange physical features such as drooping “feminine” breasts and a plump belly, which some Egyptologists have interpreted as a sign that he had something like Marfan syndrome. Personally, I think it likely that the pampered Pharaoh was just plain fat and that his artisans tried to represent this in a way that would flatter his ego.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
These fierce huntresses are after the mighty Triceratops for its prized horns as well as its meat. They have succeeded in isolating one of the ten-ton herbivores from its herd and are ready to attack it with their spears!
Although this is of course a fantastical scenario, there actually was an all-female corps of elephant huntresses called the Gbeto in the West African kingdom of Dahomey (located in the territory of modern Benin). They are thought to have been the forerunners to the kingdom's famous "Amazon" female soldiers and bodyguards.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Out in the desert sands near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, there is said to lie the tomb in which the remains of Queen Cleopatra VII and her Roman paramour Mark Antony were buried. Archaeologists have yet to uncover this tomb, assuming it has survived the ravages of time at all. But I would like to think it looked something like this.
When designing the architecture for this tomb, I wanted to combine Greco-Roman and Egyptian styles to reflect the cultural background of the persons buried within it. As you can see, the portico at the front of the building is Romanesque, but the “pylon” (tall sloping façade) behind it and the big pyramid at the back are clearly callbacks to Egyptian traditions which were already ancient by Antony and Cleopatra’s time.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a simple sketchbook doodle of a cheerful African-American girl, drawn in an anime/manga-inspired style.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Around 75 million years ago, a mother Gorgosaurus libratus is using the warmth of her three-ton body to incubate her nest. Gorgosaurus was a member of the albertosaurine branch within the family Tyrannosauridae, which would have been more slender and fleet-footed than the heavily built tyrannosaurines (T. rex being an example of the latter).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." --- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Mut was a “mother goddess” of sorts wedded to the creator god Amun-Ra, with the lunar god Khonsu being their son. In fact, her very name translates to “mother” in the Egyptian language. She rose to prominence in the Egyptian pantheon during the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC), with the Pharaoh’s Queen serving as her chief priestess in temple rituals. In my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony, Mut is the patron goddess whose guidance aids my protagonist Itaweret on her quest.
If you’re wondering why I portrayed Mut with very dark skin here, it’s supposed to recall the black diorite rock which Egyptians would use for some of their sculptures. For the Egyptians, the color black symbolized fertility and rebirth, likely based on the fertile dark silt which covered the Nile floodplains during the annual inundation.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
On a cold winter night 20,000 years ago in North America, the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis declares its supremacy over its hunting ground with a roar to the starry heavens. Although saber-toothed cats like Smilodon were not true tigers, they probably were able to roar like modern big cats due to possessing a similar arrangement of hyoid bones attached to their larynx (voice box).
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This nobleman from ancient Egypt is wearing a headdress of linen cloth called a khat. It was similar in form to the iconic striped nemes crown worn by the Pharaohs, but unlike the nemes, the khat was shorter in length and usually did not have stripes or other fancy patterning. It could be worn both by Pharaohs and nobility.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This male Homo erectus has caught a fish with a harpoon that is tipped with a barbed bone point, with tree sap being used to glue the point to the spear’s shaft. The inspiration for this was the discovery of a barbed bone point in Olduvai Gorge which dates back to 800,000 years ago and appears to have been manufactured by Homo erectus. This was a surprise for the researchers since bone tools were previously thought to be the invention of Homo sapiens (our species) hundreds of millennia later. Goes to show you that our earlier hominin ancestors could have been even more inventive than we’ve given them credit for.
Coelophysis bauri was an early theropod dinosaur that roamed southwestern North America during the Late Triassic Period. Almost ten feet long and with a slender and elongated build, Coelophysis could have been a sociable pack hunter as suggested by fossil finds in which over a thousand specimens have been found close together. However, it is also possible that these were simply congregations of otherwise unaffiliated individuals caught together in flash floods.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
I drew this portrait of an Aboriginal Australian woman on the eve of “Australia Day” (January 26th), which commemorates the arrival of the British First Fleet to Australia in 1788 (thereby marking the start of the continent’s colonization by Europeans). Although widely celebrated by Australians of European descent today, for the Aboriginal population “Australia Day” is a time of mourning since it represents the brutal thievery of their land and the suffering they have received at the hands of the European invaders (it’s similar to what happened to the Native Americans here in the US). This piece is therefore meant to be an expression of solidarity towards the Aboriginal Australian people.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is my reconstruction of a hominin specimen known as Kabwe 1, named for the town of Kabwe, Zambia near which it was found. Dating back between 324,000 and 274,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene, this specimen was originally classified as a novel species called Homo rhodesiensis, but that taxon has since become a junior synonym of Homo heidelbergensis.
What is remarkable about Kabwe 1’s skull is that, although its prominent brow ridges and low braincase profile appear “archaic” (i.e. inherited from earlier hominins), its braincase volume of 1,230 cubic centimeters overlaps with the range seen in modern humans.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Nah, that's not Kanye, that's Sean.
Dug yr Cleo color resto and erectus bw art. Erectus was the most durable Homo (human). We gotta long way togo to match them in smarts and adaptability in my opinion.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Nah, that's not Kanye, that's Sean.
Dug yr Cleo color resto and erectus bw art. Erectus was the most durable Homo (human). We gotta long way togo to match them in smarts and adaptability in my opinion.
Thanks!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This portrait would show a female representative of the hominin species Homo heidelbergensis. Evolving from Homo erectus in Africa around 700,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis would then spread into Europe and Asia, where they would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Those of the species that stayed behind in Africa, on the other hand, would give rise to us modern humans.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
I drew this random prehistoric babe using Raquel Welch’s character from the old caveman movie One Million Years B.C. as reference for the pose and attire. However, I tried to model her facial features after those of the lovely Afro-British actress Jodie Turner-Smith. If they ever remake that old movie, they should cast someone with her good looks as Welch’s successor!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
Deep in the rainforests of Southeast Asia approximately nine thousand years ago, a native Negrito huntress must defend herself from an attacking Malayan tiger with her flint-tipped bamboo spear. The culture she would represent would be the Hoabinhian culture which occupied the region between 10,000 and 2000 BC.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period, Ostafrikasaurus crassiserratus prowls the semitropical savannas of what will one day become the East African country of Tanzania. Known only from a few fossilized teeth, Ostafrikasaurus appears to have been a relatively small, primitive member of the spinosaurid family, the same family of fish-eating theropod dinosaurs as the better-known Spinosaurus and Baryonyx. However, the serrated blade-like character of its teeth, in sharp contrast to the smoother and more conical dentition of its Cretaceous successors, suggests that Ostafrikasaurus had yet to complete the evolutionary transition to specialized piscivory.
This artwork was commissioned by a gentleman named Christopher Doran.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
A young Kentake, or Queen of Kush, stands on her palace’s balcony with the scintillating Saharan sun to her back. This scene would take place during the phase of Kushite civilization called the Meroitic period (300 BC to 400 AD), which began when the kingdom’s capital was moved from Napata to Meroe further up the Nile. This period would have been contemporaneous with Ptolemaic rule in Egypt and then the Roman Empire.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
It’s a foggy morning in the Late Cretaceous Period, and this Tyrannosaurus rex is smelling the air in search of a nice big, meaty breakfast. You know what they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day!
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This humble infantryman from ancient Egypt stands guard with a copper-headed spear and a cowhide shield as his main equipment. He may not have much armor on, but when you live under the sweltering African sun, basic comfort takes at least as much priority as protection.
With this simple piece, I wanted to try out a different approach to digital coloring by giving the overlaying outlines a range of colors rather than having them all be plain black. I think it came out rather nice, making it look like something from certain animated cartoons.
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
This is a head portrait of Torosaurus latus, a large ceratopsian dinosaur from North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, approximately 68 to 66 million years ago. Although a close cousin and contemporary of the iconic Triceratops, Torosaurus stood apart from the latter by having a longer skull with a pair of openings (or fenestrae) in its neck frill. A few paleontologists have speculated that Torosaurus may actually represent a mature form of Triceratops, although this has not become the consensus position as far as I know.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This woman represents a population of early Homo sapiens which lived in North Africa around 300,000 years ago. Remains of theirs, which have been found at the site of Jebel Irhoud in what is now Morocco, may represent the oldest Homo sapiens specimens yet discovered. However, their skull morphology shows a mixture of “modern” and “primitive” traits, with the brow ridges being more prominent and the braincase more elongated than in modern humans today.
This is actually the second time I’ve drawn a woman from Jebel Irhoud. I felt my first attempt didn’t capture the “archaic” quality of their facial features very well, and I think I’ve done a better job of that here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Sahelanthropus tchadensis was a species of ape which roamed the area of Chad in northern Central Africa between 7-6 million years ago, during the late Miocene Epoch. When initially discovered and described, Sahelanthropus was interpreted as a possible human ancestor due to the position of its skull’s foramen magnum (an opening where it connects with the spine), which suggested a bipedal posture. However, later analysis of its femur cast doubt on whether the animal would have been a habitual biped like humans and most other hominins.
For my portrayal here, I went with an “arboreal biped” method of locomotion for Sahelanthropus, meaning it would travel through the treetops on its hind legs. I like to think that’s how the very first hominins got around prior to their descent to the ground.
Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
Nice art Brandon.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by mena7: Nice art Brandon.
Thank you!
It’s late afternoon on the plains of eastern Africa, and this warrior is scanning her surroundings for the predators that might be ready to wake up for their nocturnal hunts.
I didn’t really have a particular culture or time period in mind for the warrior here, but as you might guess, the snow-capped mountaintop in the background is inspired by famous East African mountains like Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I wanted to draw a warrior woman of a different ethnicity from my usual, so here’s a Native American chick armed with a war club. If you think her dress is a bit skimpy, keep in mind that in a number of Native cultures, women as well as men would go around in simple loincloths or skirts during the hot summer months. The women often wouldn’t even bother with bras to cover their bosoms (as was the case in many parts of the world prior to European and Islamic invasions).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These would be a couple of warriors from the ninth century AD. The dude on the left would be a Norse Viking from Scandinavia whereas the one on the right would be an Igbo from southeastern Nigeria in West Africa. During the ninth century, while the Vikings were going around on their infamous raids, ancestral Igbo people were producing some of the earliest and most exquisite bronze artworks in West African history, as shown by artifacts uncovered at the archaeological site of Igbo-Ukwu.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Come on, where are the black vikings?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a portrait of myself as a Viking warrior. As far as I know, my ancestors were primarily Anglo-Saxon rather than Norse, but given that the Norse did settle in Britain and that they and the Anglo-Saxons shared a common Germanic linguistic and cultural heritage anyway, I felt it wasn’t a big enough difference to matter that much.
The symbol on the medallion at the centerpiece of the necklace here is a valknut, which is associated with Norse and other ancient Germanic religions. Unfortunately, it’s one of those symbols which white supremacist scum have appropriated, which goes to show you that they ruin everything they touch. However, the symbol is also commonly employed nowadays in non-racist contexts, such as Neopagan ones. I figured it would be a symbol that a Viking would tout the same way many Christians today have the cross on their necklaces.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Deep in the jungles along the coast of West Africa, a native heroine and her pet leopard must defend their homeland from vicious Viking marauders!
Although this would be a fictional scenario, we do have records of the Vikings raiding settlements along the North African coast. One account from the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland describes Norwegian Vikings attacking a North African region called “Mauritania” (probably not to be confused with the modern country of Mauritania, as it is said to be “across the sea” from the Balearic Islands) and taking “black men” for captives. One cannot help but wonder if these wide-ranging seafarers could have ever sailed south of the Sahara…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This couple would represent the “people of the plains”, one of two cultures of early Homo sapiens I have developed for a novel set in Africa around 100,000 years ago. As their name would imply, the people of the plains live as nomads following herds of game across the savannas, with their basic social unit being small fission-fusion bands with more or less egalitarian social structures. They do not have rigid gender roles, as both men and women may hunt animals and gather plant foods, and their preferred weapon of the hunt is an obsidian-tipped spear which may either be thrown or thrust. The protagonist of the novel, a young woman named Oja, is from this culture.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
^^^ and ^^
So you watch The Last Kingdom?
Future novel coming out where Nordheimers sail/row down and encounter Zenaga and Takruri near the 10th century river Senegal? If so will give you rights to Ta-kaa, the Allsider -- A Hyborian age inspiration adaptable to historic fiction Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: ^^^ and ^^
So you watch The Last Kingdom?
Future novel coming out where Nordheimers sail/row down and encounter Zenaga and Takruri near the 10th century river Senegal? If so will give you rights to Ta-kaa, the Allsider -- A Hyborian age inspiration adaptable to historic fiction
Never seen The Last Kingdom, but I do like Vikings in general. And I actually had an idea for a short story about Vikings visiting early medieval Nigeria a while back, but I don't know if I'll have it written down anytime soon. Maybe in the future.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This couple would represent the “people of the rivers”, the second of two cultures of early Homo sapiens I have developed for a novel set in Africa around 100,000 years ago. Unlike the people of the plains, the people of the rivers live in permanent villages alongside rivers and streams, which provide them with a ready supply of fish year-round. They also have more pronounced gender roles than the plains people, with men doing the hunting and fishing and women gathering plant foods and being primarily responsible for domestic chores and childcare. Other distinguishing characteristics of the river cultures include hereditary shaman-chieftains leading each village, sacred burial grounds marked by megaliths, clothes woven from reeds, and gold nuggets featuring prominently in their jewelry.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Pretty sure Netflix got it.
Plenty of lore of the melding dropping and adopting shifting identities/heritages in the 11th cent(?) Britain of Kelts and a full range of Germanics.
If you don't like it I'll give you back your hour of time
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: So you watch The Last Kingdom?
Never seen The Last Kingdom, but I do like Vikings in general.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Armed with both a spear and a fearsome Allosaurus for a battle mount, this valiant knight is more than ready to vanquish her enemies in defense of her savanna domain!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Did you know that the Almoravid dynasty of Islamic Spain may have had African female archers in their army? One medieval chronicler describes a contingent of them, headed by a female general named Nujeymah, who participated in a siege on Valencia in 1094 (at the time, the city was under the control of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, better known as “El Cid”). The historian Elena Lourie believes that these female archers may have come from the West African kingdom of Wagadu (or medieval Ghana), which would regularly send auxiliary troops to the Almoravids.
And yes, as portrayed here, they apparently did have their heads shaved except for little tufts at the top.
Works Cited
Lourie, Elena. “Black Women Warriors in the Muslim Army Besieging Valencia and the Cid’s Victory: A Problem of Interpretation,” Traditio 55 (2000), 181-209.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In the theocratic culture of ancient Egypt, priests were among the most influential and prestigious citizens. It was they who tended to the needs of the pantheon's numerous gods and goddesses in the temples. One assortment of priests, the priesthood of Amun in the southern Egyptian city of Waset (known to the Greeks as Thebes and to us as Luxor) would even amass enough wealth and influence to challenge the power of the Pharaohs themselves!
A common article of attire for male priests was a leopard's hide wrapped around the torsos and shoulders, as depicted here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A primordial woman stands on a mossy tree bough within the jungle canopy, admiring the full moon and the stars surrounding it.
This scene was inspired by a Frank Frazetta piece titled “The Moon’s Rapture”. In fact I find Frazetta’s work, and that of artists in a similar genre, to be a treasure trove of inspiration, if you haven’t figured that out already.
(This is a “Safe for Work” version of the artwork, by the way. Click here for the original version.)
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by One Third African: And now for a different type of art...
This is a colorization I did of the Narmer Palette, an ancient Egyptian siltstone palette dating to the 31st century BC. It is commonly interpreted as recording the Upper Egyptian king Narmer’s conquest of Lower Egypt, which led to the country’s unification under the First Dynasty (it is important to note that Upper and Lower Egypt refer to the southern and northern regions of the country, respectively). The program I used to colorize this was Photoshop CS6.
already made it to youtube
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Mounted on her mahout-driven Lurdusaurus, this pseudo-Egyptian queen is going on a hunt out in the desert on the frontier of her native civilization.
If you don’t know what a Lurdusaurus is, it was an iguanodont dinosaur from Early Cretaceous Africa that had an unusually long neck as well as possible adaptations for a semi-aquatic lifestyle similar to a hippo. I therefore figured an Egyptianesque theme would suit it well.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Here is a quick drawing of the head of Brontosaurus excelsus, perhaps the most iconic of all the sauropod dinosaurs. For a long time, the genus Brontosaurus was considered a junior synonym of Apatosaurus, yet nowadays they are considered separate genera again. So Brontosaurus is back, baby!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commissioned piece I did for a client on DeviantArt, who wanted an illustrated adaptation of a scene form the 1925 silent film The Lost World, in which an Allosaurus attacks a Brontosaurus. The dinosaurs are supposed to have a “retro” quality to them as requested by the commissioner.
This would be my interpretation of the superheroine Ororo Munroe (or “Storm”) from Marvel Comics’ X-Men. Usually the character is portrayed with straightened hair, but I personally felt that dreadlocks would look better on a heroine of African descent while still keeping the “long and flowing” look.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I think this space-faring adventurer makes her living as an intergalactic pirate or outlaw, which would make her an antihero of sorts (unlike most of my female characters).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
LINK TO NSFW IMAGE I drew this figure as an exercise to practice my female anatomy some more, using a photo of a nude model as my reference (although the model in the original picture was considerably skinnier than what I ended up with here). I have to say, as far as anatomy studies go, this was quite a fun one to do.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
If you had the strongest bone-crunching jaws of any terrestrial predator, you wouldn’t need long arms, either!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
From left to right, the three Queens of the Nile portrayed here are the Ptolemaic Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC), the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut (1507-1458 BC), and the Kushite Kentake Amanirenas (50 BC-10 AD). The composition for this piece was inspired by the cover art for the music album “Destiny Fulfilled” by the all-female group Destiny’s Child (the group Beyonce used to be a part of).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a quick sketchbook drawing of Tlatolophus galorum, a hadrosaurid dinosaur from Mexico during the Late Cretaceous Period. It was a close relative of the iconic Parasaurolophus, and probably shared with that other hollow-crested hadrosaur a propensity for producing low-frequency noises.
I drew this head portrait of Velociraptor mongoliensis while in the car on a family trip (though I finished up the shading in our hotel room). Although its body is feathered as it should be, I decided to make the dinosaur’s head “naked” to give it a vulture-like vibe. I think that look suits predatory dromaeosaurids like Velociraptor very well, personally.
This is a little sketchbook doodle of my character Itaweret (from my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony) yelling out in fury. She does not take kindly to people who insult her pride or her Kemetian (aka ancient Egyptian) heritage.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A gentleman from Texas, who represents an ascendant STEM non-profit called the Ishango Institute, paid me for permission to print one of my depictions of the Egyptian-born philosopher and teacher Hypatia of Alexandria in math textbooks his organization is producing. The moment inspired me to doodle another quick little portrait of her. I am so happy to see my artwork getting more recognition like this!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
American Mastodon Deep in the redwood forests of Pleistocene North America roams a bull specimen of Mammut americanum, or the American mastodon. Although often confused with its iconic contemporary the woolly mammoth, the mastodon was in fact a distant relative whose distinctive dentition were adapted to feeding on leaves (whereas mammoths would have preferred grasses). Therefore, mastodons would have preferred wooded habitats instead of the open plains or tundra favored by mammoths. However, both mastodons and mammoths shared a common fate of extinction at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch around 11,000 years ago.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of the African superheroine Vixen from DC Comics. If you don’t know who she is, she possesses a special totem (the fox symbol attached to her jewelry) which allows her to harness the spirits of animals and therefore acquire their abilities for her crime-fighting career. She has appeared in a few cartoons and television series based on DC properties, but I hope someday she’ll get a starring role in a movie from the DC Cinematic Universe.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a quick little "bust" drawing of Sheva Alomar, a character from the fifth Resident Evil game. It was important to me that my interpretation of her have darker skin and natural hair instead of the Eurocentric mulatto-with-straightened-hair look she had in the original game.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And this would be the full-body reinterpretation of Sheva Alomar that I promised earlier. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Bit off-topic, but...
This quick map I made shows the spread of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic linguistic phylum between 11,000 BC and 600 AD. The hypothesized proto-Afroasiatic "homeland" (region of origin) at the beginning of the time frame is painted in brown along the western Red Sea coastline. I will admit the positioning of some of the textual labels on the map (which would ideally mark where each branch of Afroasiatic originated) is a bit uncertain; for instance, it's probable that the Cushitic branch of Afroasiatic emerged further north, closer to the Red Sea Hills, than implied by its label's positioning here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Prettied up my map a bit: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A small, simple sketch of a roaring (or should that be screeching?) generic dromaeosaurid. More than anything else, it was a way to keep my skill at drawing open theropod mouths sharp.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I did this artwork of a kissing couple as a celebration of Pride Month. As a cis-gendered heterosexual man myself, I don’t normally draw gay couples like this, but I nonetheless feel that all love is love and should be celebrated.
If you’re curious, the guy on the left would be ethnically Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) whereas his lover is Han Chinese.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a small sketch of a Neanderthal man’s face which I colored using my old colored pencils. Descended from a subset of Homo heidelbergensis which migrated into Eurasia from Africa during sometime during the Middle Pleistocene, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) would have evolved a number of adaptations to their cold northern environment (e.g. stocky physiques with proportionately short limbs) while the ancestors of modern humans (Homo sapiens) still enjoyed the hotter climates of Africa.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Time for another reinterpretation of an African female character from pop culture! This one would be Elena, the capoeira artist from Kenya in the Street Fighter video game franchise. Her design rather reminds me of Storm from Marvel Comics, in large part due to them both sharing the trait of white hair as well as a Kenyan national heritage.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Having ventured into the long grass where the raptors prowl, our heroine must count on her abilities as a martial artist (along with, of course, her very big knife) to keep herself from ending up on the wrong end of the food chain!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Time for a throwback to a piece I did in late 2017...
This is a split portrait of the goddess Isis (or Auset) as she would have been seen in the different cultures that venerated her. On the left is the original Egyptian version or her, whereas on the right is the version the Greeks and Romans adopted after incorporating Egypt into their empires. In both cases, the goddess would have been represented in the image of her human disciples. It’s a bit like how Jesus’s appearance in art changes from Middle Eastern to European, African, etc. depending on the culture depicting him.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Back to more current art...
This is a representation of the famous Egyptian goddess Auset (better known as Isis) that is inspired by assorted double-faced “janiform” vases from the ancient Mediterranean. On the left side would be the face of the goddess as a native Egyptian woman, whereas the face on the right is based on how the Romans would depict her once they adopted her cult as one of their own after annexing Egypt.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a little sketch of an unnamed urban martial-artist character delivering a punch on the run. I did it to keep my skills at drawing cool action poses sharp.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Today I’m sharing an artwork I did back in early 2018, which shows the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII after a session in her royal bathhouse. Mainly, I wanted to depict her wearing a recognizably African-style headwrap, and I still like that concept, even if it may not be that historically probable.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This tribesman represents an ancient ethnic group from northern Africa which various Roman authors, such as Pliny the Elder, addressed as the Leucoaethiopes, or “White Aethiopians” (a seemingly oxymoronic term since aethiopes means “burnt face” in Greek). The exact meaning of the term is uncertain, with various modern scholars claiming it refers to people admixed between Black Africans and some sort of lighter-skinned “Caucasoid” race of Eurasian origin. However, I believe it could alternatively refer to Black Africans in the Sahara who traditionally painted their bodies white or with white patterning, as some ethnic groups elsewhere on the continent (for example, the Surma and Mursi of southwestern Ethiopia) do today. So that interpretation is what I chose to go with.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Don't forget to check out my Redbubble page if you want to buy art for Juneteenth this year!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is 40 BC in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria, Egypt, and Queen Cleopatra VII is embracing her new Roman lover Mark Antony. Like many of Cleopatra’s infamous affairs, there is a political angle to this coupling, with Antony offering Roman military might to protect the queen’s grip on power in exchange for access to the Hellenistic Egyptian empire’s great wealth. In the end, neither of their ambitions would be realized, with Egypt becoming a province of the Roman Empire after Cleopatra’s suicide.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is 50,000 years ago in the insular continent of Australia. The giant monitor lizard Varanus priscus (once known as “Megalania”) is taking a stroll alongside the river when a hungry saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) leaps out of the water to attack it. During the Pleistocene epoch, both of these massive predatory reptiles would have ruled as the apex predators of their respective habitats. However, whereas the giant monitor would eventually go extinct, the saltwater crocodile still haunts the waters of northern Australia (as well as Southeast Asia and Melanesia) in the present day.
Posted by serna (Member # 23398) on :
You have some very good artwork here, I loved them all! I checked some of your books on your website and I'm interested in buying some printed versions. Do you send it to Europe? Currently I'm staying in Athens as dealing with some paperwork for my visa in Greece and seems like it will take some time here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by serna: You have some very good artwork here, I loved them all! I checked some of your books on your website and I'm interested in buying some printed versions. Do you send it to Europe? Currently I'm staying in Athens as dealing with some paperwork for my visa in Greece and seems like it will take some time here.
If you're referring to Priestess of the Lost Colony, that can be ordered in paperback from almost any online vendor (e.g. Amazon). So it should be able to reach anywhere in Europe.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Got this new shirt with my art on it from Redbubble today. Unfortunately I ordered it one size too small, so I plan to cut the illustration out and transplant it onto a larger shirt later. Still, I was eager to show off the shirt as is, so here you go:
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Sophonisba was a Carthaginian noblewoman who lived in the early third century BC, during the time of the Second Punic War (the same war in which Hannibal Barca fought the Roman Republic). When the Romans took her captive, her Numidian husband Masinissa persuaded her to take her own life to avoid the humiliation of being paraded about in a Roman triumphal ceremony. And so Sophonisba drank a cup of poison that he offered her, scolding him for having their marriage be so short and bitter before rejoining her ancestors at last.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be my artistic depiction of a "hoplite", or spearman, from ancient Carthage. Most of the fighters in the Carthaginian army would have actually been foreign mercenaries of various ethnicities (some African, others Iberian, still others Celtic, etc.), but this particular soldier would be a Carthaginian citizen of noble heritage forming part of an elite unit call the "Sacred Band". When designing his armor and equipment, I wanted to mix common "classical" Mediterranean elements (e.g. the "linothorax" armor he is wearing over his torso) with recognizably African ones. As for his physical appearance, it would reflect generations of admixture between the Phoenician colonists who founded Carthage and native Africans.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Here is my reconstruction of a male Homo longi (or “Dragon Man”), based on a 146,000-year old hominin skull found in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. The researchers who examined it believe it may represent a “sister species” to Homo sapiens, meaning it would be more closely related to modern humans than other hominins of late Pleistocene Eurasia such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Given the far northerly location of the site where the “Dragon Man” specimen was found, it’s possible that he had lighter skin than what I have chosen here (depending on how long its ancestors had inhabited the region after they diverged from modern humans in Africa, of course). However, since most other paleoartists have been depicting him as light-skinned, I wanted to make my portrayal of it stand out by giving him a darker complexion.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commissioned piece I did for a DeviantArt follower, who wanted a scene with a father and son bowing to the idol of an feathered-dinosaur deity in an abandoned temple. This proved to be quite a challenging scene to get right, especially with the perspective and the lighting, but I like the mood that came out nonetheless. And apparently so did my customer, who was kind enough to give me an extra tip for it (thanks, buddy!).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Tariq ibn Ziyad was a Muslim general of native North African origin who led the initial Islamic invasion of Iberia in 711-718 AD. Appointed to his position by the Arab Musa ibn Nusayr, his military successes would result in the Islamicization of al-Andalus (the Arab term for their Iberian provinces) under the Umayyad Caliphate. The Rock of Gibraltar on the Spanish coast, which you can see in the lower left of this composition, derives its modern name from the Arab term Jabal Tariq (“Mountain of Tariq”), named in his honor.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
After Cleopatra VII, Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (1370-1330 BC) may be the most widely recognized Queen from ancient Egyptian history, in no small part due to her distinctive flat-topped blue crown. She would have been the Great Royal Wife of the “Heretic” Pharaoh Akhenaten, who is most infamous for trying to replace the traditional Egyptian religion with one venerating a solar deity called the Aten (with the Pharaoh himself being held as Aten’s son and therefore earthly representative, of course). It is in fact possible that, after Akhenaten’s death, Nefertiti would have become Pharaoh herself for a short period of time.
When depicting Nefertiti, I wanted her to look a little devious, like she would have been Akhenaten’s “partner in crime” while he was on the throne. It’s my belief that the whole Atenism thing was a simple power grab on Akhenaten’s part to suppress competition with the Egyptian priestly class, particularly the Priests of Amun who had previously exerted a lot of influence on the country’s politics. And by all accounts, Nefertiti would have been a major supporter and ally to her husband’s schemes during his reign, especially since art from the period frequently shows them and their family worshiping the Aten together.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Allow me to do another little throwback today...
An Egyptian princess dips her feet into the waters of the Nile River and basks under the flaming glow of the African sun.
This was originally going to be a simple doodle of a random chick sitting down on something unspecified. However, as the drawing progressed, I felt she needed a background after all.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is sunrise in the Early Cretaceous, approximately 130 million years ago. On the insular savanna that will someday become Spain, the carcharodontosaurid predator Concavenator is waking up within sight of a grazing herd of Mantellisaurus. Distinguished by the prominent dorsal “fin” above its hips, Concavenator was relatively small for a carcharodontosaurid dinosaur, with a body length of less than twenty feet.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be an illustration for a little writing side-project I've been working on the past few days. Set in the Middle Ages, the story's protagonist is a Russian dude named Drazhan who has been brought into bondage and shipped all the way to the Swahili sultanate of Kilwa on the southeast African coast. When his master the Sultan sends Drazhan over to Great Zimbabwe to abduct their fierce and beautiful Mambokadzi (Queen), she fights him off and then offers him an alternate path to restoring his freedom. Together, they must contend not only with the Sultan of Kilwa, but also his allies in the medieval world's most powerful and technologically advanced empire: Song Dynasty China!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And this would be the full "book cover" I designed for the aforementioned side project (the first draft of which I completed last night, BTW).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It's map time again! This one is for my recently drafted historical-fiction novella "The Slave Prince of Zimbabwe", which takes place in southern Africa circa 1215 AD. It is NOT a complete map of the Old World during this period of history, as it only shows the countries and regions mentioned or represented directly in the novella.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Allow me to share character concept art for my new novella The Slave Prince of Zimbabwe...
Drazhan Khazanov, an enslaved warrior from the eastern European region of Ruthenia (or "the land of the Rus") who is our story's cunning and stealthy protagonist.
Ruvarashe, the fierce and beautiful Mambokadzi (Queen) of Zimbabwe, who is our leading lady.
Hussein ibn Suleiman, the Sultan of Kilwa, who is Drazhan's master, Ruvarashe's unwanted suitor, and the first of the story's two main antagonists.
Wong Dongxiang of Song Dynasty China, the Sultan's creditor and ally and the other major antagonist of our story.
Hondo, a supporting character who is the kingdom of Zimbabwe's highest-ranking general.
And last but not least is Chatunga, the Mambokadzi's loyal and well-trained feline companion.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This ancient Egyptian warrior is brandishing a copper battle axe as he charges into battle. Axes would have been among the first weapons used by the Egyptians in warfare, although in the beginning they would have resembled more ordinary woodcutting axes. In a typical early Egyptian battle, infantry wielding axes would be deployed once the enemy ranks had been “softened” by archers’ arrows.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And this would be an archer from Kush, the other major power along the ancient Nile!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I made this piece of fanart in anticipation of the "African Royals" DLC for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition. I thought their concept art of a Hausa warrior woman was a total babe and so wanted to depict her in my own style. Of course, the scene you see in the background is taken from a screenshot of the game.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Three T-shirt designs I was commissioned to do today. Together, they depict the goddesses Sekhmet, Ma’at, and Kali, with the first two hailing from the ancient Egyptian pantheon and the last one from Hinduism. These were such a blast to do that I spent the whole afternoon working on all three!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a quick drawing of a Tyrannosaurus rex with a hypothetical facial covering of large, armor-like scales. Lately I’ve been moving away from the more crocodilian interpretation of theropod facial integument (i.e. “cracked” keratinous covering with sensory bumps), since my paleontologist friend Jason Bourke has pointed out that the sensory bumps you see on crocodilian faces are a semiaquatic adaptation for sensing things in the water that strictly terrestrial animals like most theropod dinosaurs would not need.
That said, an armor-like facial covering of some kind seems very probable to me for tyrannosaurids and maybe other theropods, what with all the facial biting they appear to have done to each other (as indicated by scars left in the bone). Over the rest of the body, however, tyrannosaurid scalation would have been much finer as indicated by skin impressions.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Here’s an alternate version of my depiction of the Hindu goddess Kali with a more natural, dark brown skin tone. The original version, which I did as a commission for a T-shirt design, gave her blue skin typical for representations of Hindu deities, but then I thought back to the colorism rampant throughout India today, with lighter skin being held as more desirable than darker skin. It’s probable that British imperialism in India had a lot to do with this prejudice developing, but it’s possible that earlier waves of invaders from central Eurasia (e.g. the Aryans and Mughals) contributed to it too. Either way, I felt that depicting a popular Hindu goddess with darker skin, like that of the aboriginal people of South Asia, would be a statement against it.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This woman represents an ethno-linguistic group of peoples known as the Khoisan, who are the aboriginal inhabitants of southernmost Africa, having lived there for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Bantu-speaking farmers from further north in the continent as well as European colonists. Their diverse languages share with one another the unique property of employing special clicking vocalizations made with the tongue. Some Khoisan peoples, such as the San, have retained a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle whereas others like the Khoekhoen would adopt pastoralism centered around the herding of cattle and other livestock.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This huntress must lie low to avoid detection by the tyrant lord of the jungle. Can she successfully evade the keen eyes and even keener nose of the prowling saurian predator? Or will she have to break cover and run as fast as she can through the primeval forest?
As you can see, I gave the tyrannosaur here a few "inaccurate" embellishments such as additional hornlets and spikes to make it look more like a fantasy creature, since it is after all a fantasy scene (unless you earnestly believe that humans ever coexisted with non-avian dinosaurs). I should probably do that for more of the dinosaurs in my fantasy art to distinguish them from their counterparts in my more realistic paleoart pieces.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be my reinterpretation of the ancient Egyptian goddess as she was portrayed in the concept art for the real-time strategy game Age of Mythology (a mythology-themed spinoff of the Age of Empires series), which was one of my favorite games to play as a teenager.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
On a chilly morning during the Pleistocene epoch, the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis is about to brunch on the corpse of a young beluga whale which has beached itself on the North American coast. If there are any perks to living during an ice age, one would be all the tasty Arctic cuisine that would come down south to your part of the world along with the advancing glaciers!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A couple of pencil drawings I did back in 2018, which depict predynastic Egyptian women...
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Over a hundred thousand years ago on the grassy plains of Pleistocene Africa, an early Homo sapiens woman must fend off a pride of attacking lions.
Did you know that, during the Pleistocene epoch, African lions could grow much larger than they do now? One specimen from Kenya known as the Natodomeri lion, which lived about two hundred millennia ago, could have weighed up to eight hundred pounds, much more massive than living lions and more on par with the giant “cave lions” of Eurasia as well as the American lion during the same epoch. Imagine the first of our species having to contend with those!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I did this artwork as a gift for a guy who follows me on DeviantArt and Twitter. It depicts his character Nala, a warrior from medieval West Africa.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Avisaurus archibaldi was a enantiornithine bird which would flown about the semitropical jungles and wetlands of North America between 70 and 66 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Known primarily from fossilized foot bones and teeth, it is thought to have retained dinosaurian claws on its wings like most of its relatives in the enantiornithine grouping. It probably was a predatory carnivore like modern hawks and eagles, hunting smaller creatures such as lizards, snakes, mammals, and invertebrates. The hornbill-like casque you can see on its snout here would be a speculative addition of mine.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I brought my artwork “Catfight” into Photoshop and tried to give it a vintage comic-book look with faded colors and a halftone effect. Inspiration came from the various “jungle girl” and “jungle adventure” comics that were all the rage in the 1940s and 1950s. You almost never see that genre around anymore, do you?
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Our huntress heroine here has found herself captured between the beak-like jaws of a giant pterosaur and is struggling for her survival high in the air. Can she vanquish the flying terror before it is able to feed her to its nest of offspring?
While the pterosaur here is a fictional species for a fantasy world, you should be able to tell it is inspired by real giant azhdarchids such as Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which had a wingspan on par with a small airplane.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This pencil-drawn portrait depicts a man from an ethnic group in ancient North Africa which the Romans called Mauri. Occupying what is now the area of Morocco north of the Atlas Mountains, the seminomadic Mauri were renown for their horsemanship like the related Numidians to their east, with a contingent of Mauri cavalry being represented as auxiliary troops for the Roman army on the Emperor Trajan’s famous triumphal column. In later periods, the Mauri would lend their name to the term “Moor”, which medieval Europeans would use to address darker-skinned people or Muslims of any ethnicity, as well as the modern Greek word mauros (meaning “black).
The dreadlocked hairstyle you see on this man is referenced from Roman depictions of the Mauri. To me, it looks similar to the dreadlocked or braided hairstyles worn by various peoples of the eastern Sahara and the Horn of Africa, such as the Beja and the Afar, as well as the wigs of the ancient Egyptians. Since almost all these ethnic groups share a common Afroasiatic linguistic heritage with the Mauri, I’m tempted to deduce that this sort of hairstyle was a tradition handed down to them from shared prehistoric ancestors in northern Africa.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a concept for a futuristic hunting rifle. Its owner probably uses it to go after alien lifeforms on other planets, dinosaurs in our own planet’s distant past, or whatever trophy hunters in the future are going to hunt (though hopefully we wouldn’t have exterminated all of our own current wildlife by then). The glowing green stuff in the tank attached to the rifle’s stock is supposed to be its ammunition.
I know I don’t normally draw firearms or futuristic stuff in general, but eh, nothing wrong with branching out every so often.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be an archer from one of the kingdoms of medieval Nubia, in what is now northern Sudan. Although the term “Nubian” is often used for all inhabitants of this region throughout history, it more properly refers to a number of ethnic groups who settled it from the Sahara Desert to the west following the collapse of the indigenous kingdom of Kush in the fourth century AD. These newcomers would establish kingdoms of their own such as Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia which would dominate the area during the Middle Ages, with Orthodox Christianity being their primary religion. It would be in the sixteenth century when the last of these Christian kingdoms fell due to pressure from the Ottoman Empire to the north and the Muslim Funj to the south, ultimately leading to the Islamization of the northern Sudan.
The reference for this Nubian archer’s design comes from a Portuguese text called the Codice Casanatense, which contains illustrations from various peoples of the world at the time it was written. Islamic Arabs would refer to the Nubian archers as “eyesmiters” in honor of their formidable accuracy.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And for a little throwback today... Here is an ink drawing of an ancient Egyptian warrior I did way back in 2014, when I was learning how to use an inking pen. As you can see, I had little to no idea how to effectively render darker skin tones with that medium of art.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I did this little piece of fanart for a comedienne friend of mine from South Carolina who goes by the moniker “Mz Punkin” on social media. I just think she’s adorable as well as amusing!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a young woman from one of the Christian kingdoms of medieval Nubia, in what is now northern Sudan to southernmost Egypt. Although the term “Nubian” is often used for all inhabitants of this region throughout history, it more properly refers to a number of ethnic groups who settled it from the Sahara Desert to the west following the collapse of the indigenous kingdom of Kush in the fourth century AD. These newcomers would establish kingdoms of their own such as Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia which would dominate the area during the Middle Ages, with Orthodox Christianity being their primary religion. It would be in the sixteenth century when the last of these Christian kingdoms fell due to pressure from the Ottoman Empire to the north and the Muslim Funj to the south, ultimately leading to the Islamization of northern Sudan.
Like my previous drawing of the medieval Nubian archer, the reference for this woman’s attire comes from a Portuguese text called the Codice Casanatense, which contains illustrations from various peoples from around the world during the sixteenth century when it was written. In fact, the original image showed the woman as having one exposed breast, which was surprising for a woman from medieval Christendom. I guess Nubians back then had less shame about showing off skin no matter what their religion was!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In ancient times, the Egyptian Nile Valley would have housed two species of crocodile, the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) and the desert crocodile (Crocodylus suchus). Although the Egyptians recognized how dangerous these predatory reptiles could be, they nonetheless venerated a deity based on the creatures called Sobek, whom they often associated with fertility, military prowess, and the might of the Pharaoh. He could be vicious at times, like the crocodile itself, but also a protective deity who helped the goddess Isis heal her murdered husband Osiris in some variations of the Osiris myth. Veneration of Sobek was particularly prominent in the Fayyum oasis of northern Egypt as well as the town of Kom Obo further south, and his followers would even mummify actual crocodiles (along with their eggs) in his honor.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is 400,000 years ago in the middle Pleistocene epoch. On a tropical island positioned somewhere between Southeast Asia and Australasia, the giant monitor lizard Varanus priscus attacks the giant orangutan relative Gigantopithecus blacki. No matter how much of a fight it puts up, the great ape is likely doomed, as its reptilian adversary possesses a venomous bite like the related Komodo dragon.
By the way, the small goat-like animal fleeing the scene would be a mainland serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), whereas the bird showing shock to the upper left is a great hornbill (Buceros bicornis). Unlike the two main combatants here, which have both gone extinct, both the serow and the hornbill are still around in Southeast Asia.
UPDATE: And here's another version with a "1930s movie" effect applied to it. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Today I wanted to share this depiction of the female Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut that I did back in late 2018. Hatshepsut is probably my favorite female Pharaoh, not only because she seems to have been an all-around competent ruler, but also because I have a thing for strong and beautiful African queens (in case you couldn't already tell).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Oshun, the Yoruba orisha (or divinity) of love and beauty, is taking a bath in the river in Nigeria that bears her name. The river in question flows through the country’s southwestern corner, passing through the city of Osogbu on its way to the Gulf of Guinea.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A short advice column I wrote on developing your own artistic style:
King Tut, Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra Reconstructed in FaceApp The video in the above link shows three amateur "reconstructions" I made of the historical figures Tutankhamun, Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra VII using the "Face Swap" feature in FaceApp. To transform the ancient sculptures into living faces, I used photos of the actors Jaden Smith, Antonio Banderas, and Zendaya respectively.
To be honest, I would have given Cleopatra curlier hair if I could, but the hair was automatically generated in the program (and the Zendaya photo I used for Cleopatra's reconstruction had the actress with straightened hair anyway).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a character I created using the character creator in the game Saints Row: The Third, which is the third entry in the Saints Row series. These games are similar to the Grand Theft Auto series in that you play a gangster in an open-world urban setting, but the ability to create your own character to play as in the single-player mode makes them even better in my opinion. And the way I see it, if you have that ability in any video game, you might as well make your character someone pleasant to look at! Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Allow me to do a little throwback today (this one showing a picture from early 2020)...
A little less than two million years ago, a female Homo erectus walks across a grassy field with a stone handaxe in her grip. Handaxes, also known as bifaces, were primitive stone tools that human ancestors such as H. erectus would have used for chopping and cutting substances such as meat, tubers, wood, and bark. They would have been the progenitors to our knives, axes, and bladed weaponry.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
One balmy night two million years ago, a female Homo erectus stands on a beach along the African coast with a crude torch in hand. H. erectus was most probably the first hominin species to make and control fire, which would have provided them light during night hours as well as a means to cook their food.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commissioned piece I did for a gentleman by the name of Joey Corpora, who wanted a scene in which a Spinosaurus faced off against a Stegosaurus in a gladiatorial arena (it’s an illustration for one of a twelve-part series of stories he has written called Dino Commando). To be honest, drawing the arena and all its spectators proved a greater challenge for me than the dinosaurs themselves, but I am glad to have gotten it done anyway!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a third-century Roman soldier of Egyptian descent wearing armor fashioned from crocodile hide. Crocodile-hide armor like this would have been worn by Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt as part of military ceremonies which honored native religious cults centered around crocodile veneration. A suit like this, found in central Egypt near the town of Manfalut, is on display in the British Museum.
Posted by mightywolf (Member # 23402) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: This is a third-century Roman soldier of Egyptian descent wearing armor fashioned from crocodile hide. Crocodile-hide armor like this would have been worn by Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt as part of military ceremonies which honored native religious cults centered around crocodile veneration. A suit like this, found in central Egypt near the town of Manfalut, is on display in the British Museum.
You're very talented, do you do this kind of art professionally or just as a hobby?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by mightywolf: You're very talented, do you do this kind of art professionally or just as a hobby?
Thank you. It's both a hobby and a career for me right now. I sell the pictures on Redbubble and take commissions every so often.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by One Third African: A warrior of the pre-colonial Philippines roars out a cry of exultation atop a tree bough overlooking the island’s jungle. Did you know that Filipino cultures used to practice ritualized headhunting? They also had a thing for tattooing their bodies, similar to related Austronesian peoples such as the Polynesians.
Here's a modified version with slightly darker skin: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Throwback time again!
This is my speculative portrait of the Ptolemaic Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII’s heretofore unidentified mother. Although we know from the historical record that Cleopatra’s father was Ptolemy XII Auletes (117-51 BC), the identity of her mother remains less certain. It could have been Ptolemy XII’s official Queen Cleopatra V, or it could have been any of the various side chicks that the male Ptolemaic rulers were known for taking. Of course, I went with the latter scenario by representing her as a native Egyptian girl. However, the falcon design on her earring is based on one found on coins minted during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This fisherwoman was spearing for small coelacanths when the bayou’s resident bully, a giant crocodilian, decided she’ll make a tasty light snack herself. Whatever the outcome of the confrontation, only one will come out alive with food for themselves!
Although the croc here would be a fictional species created for a fantasy world, it was inspired by various giant prehistoric crocodilians from prehistory, such as Deinosuchus from the Cretaceous Period.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In honor of World Gorilla Day...
Since ancient Egyptian culture and gorillas are both native to the continent of Africa…why not combine the two?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I found out that, if you google "Tianyuan Man", my depiction of this East Asian individual from ~40 kya is one of the first images to pop up! My artwork is making an impact on the Internet!
And, in case you missed it earlier, here's my portrait of Tianyuan Man:
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Itaweret, the Egyptian priestess who is the protagonist of my novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", dons a headwrap in this portrait. The idea of ancient Egyptian women wearing headwraps like this is entirely speculative on my part (the upper-class ones at least are thought to have shorn their natural hair and worn wigs most of the time), but I like the look anyway.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a penciled portrait of Yutyrannus huali, a large proceratosaurid dinosaur which hunted in northeastern Asia around 125 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period. I wanted my portrayal of the animal to have a snow leopard-like appearance here, since it and other dinosaurs of the Jehol Biota appear to have lived in an alpine environment with a relatively cool climate (cool, in the context of the Mesozoic Era, being what we would call temperate today).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a portrait of a man representing the ancient Olmec civilization, which developed in the humid lowlands of southeastern Mexico between 1600 and 400 BC. Considered among the earliest urban cultures of the Americas, the art, architecture, and written script of the Olmecs would influence that of later Mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs. They are best known for their colossal stone sculptures of grimacing human faces, the pursed lips of which have inspired “Afrocentric” claims of a pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas (which I don’t personally buy, and I certainly don’t think Native Americans needed an Old World stimulus to develop complex civilizations anymore than Africans needed a Eurasian stimulus as the old “Hamitic Hypothesis” argued).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Throwback Thursday has returned! Here's a piece from 2018...
A walled city stands on a plateau that overlooks a grassy savanna where Stegosaurus roam. Although this would be a fantasy setting, of course, the architecture here draws a bit from the Great Zimbabwe civilization (after which the modern country is named).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This eagle-taming huntress represents an enigmatic prehistoric people known as “Population Y”, whose existence has been inferred from traces of ancestry they left behind in the genomes of modern Australasians and some Native American groups in South America. It’s possible that the Population Y people migrated to the Americas millennia before the primary ancestors of modern Native Americans (the latter arriving around 15,000 years ago), and human footprints in New Mexico dated to 23,000 years ago may record their presence.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Horus (or Heru), the Egyptian falcon-headed god who often served as their national tutelary god. The son of Osiris and Isis, he is best known for the series of myths in which he fought against his uncle Set to avenge his father’s murder. The Egyptians also identified Horus with the sky, with the sun being his right eye and the moon his left.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A few hundred millennia ago, this prehistoric woman has invented a pose that will be immortalized in the annals of history as the classic "Jack-O" pose. It's perhaps the most significant development for humankind since the domestication of fire!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
October has come again, so my OC Itaweret (from Priestess of the Lost Colony) is dressing up to celebrate the occasion! As for her choice of costume...well, what other iconic Halloween getup would suit an ancient Egyptian chick?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a “model sheet” I drew for my character Itaweret (from Priestess of the Lost Colony) on graph paper. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit a back view of her onto the sheet, but drawing it on graph paper did help with keeping everything in proportion.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a character model sheet for Philos, an Achaean (Greek) shepherd-boy from my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony. Lines were drawn with pencil on graph paper while the colors were added in Photoshop.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Time for another "Priestess of the Lost Colony" character model sheet! This one is for Bek, who is Itaweret’s teenaged younger brother and the intended heir to the governorship of the Egyptian colony they both call home.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a model sheet for Scylax of Mycenae, the warrior king who is the main antagonist of my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony. After doing similar sheets for the novel’s protagonist and two of the most important supporting characters, I felt the series would be incomplete without the “Big Bad” himself.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my vision of a woman of the Fremen, the native human inhabitants of the desert plant Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s classic Dune novels. They wear special suits called “stillsuits” which are designed to conserve and recycle as much moisture from their bodies as possible, and their eyes are all blue as a side-effect from consuming large quantities of the local spice melange. When designing my take on a Fremen woman, I wanted to channel a mixture of Islamic, African, and Aboriginal Australian vibes, which I felt best suited their planet’s desert climate.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I drew this ancient Egyptian dancer chick shakin’ it as a way to unwind on a Friday night. Of course, there’s always a good reason to draw a voluptuous woman having fun!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Oja, an early Homo sapiens woman from Africa circa 100,000 years ago, is using a spearthrower (similar to a Native American atlatl or an Aboriginal Australian woomera) so that her spear will fly faster and with greater force. She is the protagonist of another novel I am writing, which is basically a story about the interaction between different prehistoric cultures.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commission I did for a gentleman who needed a visual illustration for a music video he was making. He wanted me to draw an African queen listening to music on her smartphone while reading some texts, so I chose the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti as the subject (even though, yes, there were no smartphones back in ancient Egypt; he basically wanted to mix ancient and modern themes in the scene).
I wonder what kind of music she would be listening to?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
ALL HAIL THE GODDESS-EMPRESS OF MANKIND!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Our world may have less megafauna today than it once did, but the largest animal known to have ever lived is still around. It’s the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), which can weigh in excess of 200 tons and reach a body length nearing 100 feet. Unlike most other mammals, among blue whales, it is the female of the species that is generally larger than the male.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I wanted to draw something sexy, so have this sultry seductress lying down on a bedsheet!
(Believe it or not, this is actually the PG-13 version of the artwork. The original, suffice to say, would not be appropriate to show here. )
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Quick pencil sketch of the back view of my character Ruvarashe, the Mambokadzi (Queen) of Great Zimbabwe in my historical-fiction novella The Slave Prince of Zimbabwe. That three-pronged stiletto she’s holding in her right hand here is an invention of my imagination but is inspired by the Japanese sai.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It’s a chilly and dark winter day in the temperate rainforests of Late Cretaceous Alaska, so this Nanuqsaurus’s breath really stands out!
Protip: If you want to depict light-colored cloudy or misty masses in pencil art, it helps to leave areas of the paper blank white (with maybe some erasing and smoothing on the edges) without giving them stark outlines.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
As the Pharaoh of Egypt watches over her kingdom at night, she notices an otherworldly vessel hovering overhead. Hopefully, they’ve come only as tourists rather than as a threat…
I did this scene as a commission for the same guy who commissioned the “Studying Egyptian Queen” artwork. As with that other scene, he wanted to use it for a music video on his YouTube channel.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A quick doodle of Argentinosaurus, a major contender for the title of largest dinosaur (and largest terrestrial animal) known. A member of the titanosaurian sauropod lineage, this giant would have roamed the savannas of South America between 96 and 92 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. It may have weighed over 110 tons and ran as long from head to tail as 130 feet.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Cleopatra caught you ogling her from behind, and she is not happy about it. Knowing her, I would run the hell away if I were you.
Confession: as arguably overrated and overexposed as she is among Egyptian rulers, Cleopatra VII can be fun for me to draw, not least because I get to combine native Egyptian and Helleno-Macedonian motifs when designing her look.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Elasmosaurus platyurus is perhaps the most iconic of the plesiosaurs, a group of marine reptiles which swam in the oceans throughout the Mesozoic Era. Existing around 80 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, Elasmosaurus is known to have hunted in the Western Interior Seaway which once submerged central North America. Its elongated neck would have run over twenty feet in length.
By the way, the bumpy skin and glowing bioluminescent spots portrayed here are speculative features rather than known for certain.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These two siblings, both the children of a provincial lord, are spending some quality time with one another while riding on their trusty mounts out on the grasslands. As you can see, the lady of the pair is a bit more eager to race at high speed than her brother.
Although the dinosaurs they're riding are a fantasy species, they are based on the Carnotaurus, which may have been one of the fastest predatory dinosaurs ever to run across the earth thanks to strong tail muscles connected to its thighs.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
New artist's opinion piece on the emergent NFT ("non-fungible token") scene and why participating in it isn't worth it for us:
Itaweret, the High Priestess of Mut from the recently sacked Kemetian (that is, ancient Egyptian) colony of Per-Pehu, has just obtained a new mount to ride into battle against her people’s enemies. This is something that actually happens in my novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", but I won’t spoil how it comes to pass here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
The infamous Queen Cleopatra is supposed to be showing off a little sass with her expression here. I love drawing her with that kind of attitude!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This kicking Tyrannosaurus rex was inspired by a skeleton mounted at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which I visited with my family while we were in Colorado seeing relatives. I truly think the T. rex specimen they have mounted over there has the most awe-inspiring pose of any T. rex exhibited in the world.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Back in the early 2000s (or my middle school years), I was a fan of a little animated Flash webtoon by James Farr called Xombie. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the undead had taken over, it was the action-packed story of a heroic “variant” zombie named Dirge who, along with his loyal husky Cerberus, had to escort a little girl to one of the last few surviving human settlements. One of the other characters they would meet along the way, after fighting through hordes of ravenous normal zombies, would be the reanimated Egyptian mummy Nephthys, who lived in a museum guarded by her (also reanimated, of course) Velociraptor Chimera. You can tell already that this would have been quite an appealing series to my younger self, even if it has fallen into obscurity since then.
Anyway, these would be my fan redesigns of Nephthys and Chimera. In the original webtoon, Nephthys was rather “whitewashed” in appearance whereas Chimera looked like one of the scaly Jurassic Park raptors, so I naturally had to fix those aspects in my redesigns.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
66 million years before a certain eccentric Scotsman would set out to entertain the world using the power of genetic engineering, the ancestors of two of his leading attractions duke it out in the semitropical forests of Late Cretaceous North America.
As you might infer from the dinosaurs’ iconic designs, this scene is actually set in the universe of the Jurassic Park/World film franchise. I made it as a response to a certain “prologue” sequence released to promote Jurassic World: Dominion, which is supposed to be set in the Cretaceous Period before all those dinosaurs got cloned. As cinematographically gorgeous as it is, I was not a fan of the blatant anachronisms and other paleontological errors in the scene, especially its portrayal of Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus carolinii as arch-rivals even though the two species lived almost thirty-five million years apart and on separate continents.
I feel that a more suitable confrontation would be between T. rex and Triceratops since both are known to have coexisted with one another. That’s why it’s such a classic paleoart trope to begin with. Besides, having the T. rex fight a big herbivore would be a welcome change of pace since we’ve already seen it against other theropod dinosaurs in the franchise. Oh well, I hope that Jurassic World: Dominion turns out to be a fun popcorn movie nonetheless (to be honest, JP3 is the only JP/W movie I truly dislike, although I will admit that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was a relatively weak entry in the series as well, and I don't think any sequel will ever top the original Jurassic Park anyway).
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This is Sennuwy, another character from my novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony". Once a friend of the High Priestess Itaweret who served the goddess Mut alongside her, Sennuwy has found herself forced into bondage along with the other Kemetian (Egyptian) citizens of Per-Pehu after the Mycenaeans under Scylax sack their home city. It will take more than yokes and chains to break her spirit, and yet enslavement not be the worst fate that awaits her…
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This would be a digital painting of Itaweret, the Kemetian (ancient Egyptian) protagonist of my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony. For some reason, my efforts at digital artwork that doesn’t use any crisp black outlines end up looking rather muddy, but I am nonetheless a little proud of how this came out.
UPDATE: A pencil-shaded version of my previous Itaweret artwork. Both this and the digital painting I posted earlier used the same, lightly penciled line art as a base. To produce the digital work, I brought a scan of the line art into Clip Studio Paint (my preferred art software) as a layer set to the Multiply blending mode and then "painted" underneath it. Afterward, I shaded in the original line art on paper with my trusty old set of pencils. Amazing that I could do both a digital and traditional version of this artwork, no?
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Three million years ago on the plains of Africa, this Australopithecus afarensis isn’t looking too happy. Maybe he’s concerned about some of the less noble or thoughtful stuff his descendants might eventually get up to?
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This is a portrait of a baby whose ancestry is supposed to be a mix between African and Southern European. If rendered in full color, his skin tone would be bronze or caramel and his hair would be curly and almost black. There’s actually supposed to be a little story behind this drawing, but I don’t want to spoil it here.
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Somewhere in the eastern Sahara around 16,000 years ago, these two hunters scouting the dunes for wild game. The language they speak is Proto-Afrasan (or Proto-Afroasiatic), and it will give rise to an entire phylum of languages spoken across northern and eastern Africa as well as southwestern Eurasia. Examples of Afrasan languages include ancient Egyptian, Sudanese Beja, Somali, most of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, and the Berber and Semitic families (the latter of these having entered Asia sometime before 3750 BC).
The exact origin point of the Proto-Afrasan language remains unknown, but most likely it is somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly either the eastern Sahara Desert or along the coast of the Red Sea. The dispersal of its speakers across Africa and into Eurasia would have been facilitated by the transformation of the Sahara from desert to grassy savanna between 14,000 and 5,500 years ago, during the terminal Pleistocene to early and mid-Holocene epochs.
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Andromeda, the mythical princess of Aethiopia (what the Greeks called the region of Sudan in northeastern Africa), stands on the western shore of the Red Sea beside her kingdom. She would be the princess whom the Greek demigod Perseus rescued from sacrifice to the sea monster Cetus. This time, I based her appearance on the gorgeous South Sudanese-descended model Nyakim Gatwech.
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After an infant lowland gorilla has fallen into an estuary flowing through the coast of Central Africa, the silverback of the troop must defend them from a predatory pod of bottlenose dolphins!
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A little pencil sketch of Oja, my character from Paleolithic Africa, leaping into battle with her knife drawn. It was an opportunity to practice dynamic posing again.
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Colored version of the previous artwork: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Time to reshare some older work of mine again...
Dihya al-Kahina was a legendary warrior queen and seer of the Zenata, a Berber-speaking people who lived in the region of northeastern Algeria around the 7th century AD. Born into a royal subtribe of the Zenata called the Jarawa, al-Kahina is best known for resisting the Islamic Arab conquest of North Africa until her death between the years 702 and 705 AD (accounts of how she died differ, but it seems likely it happened in the thick of battle). She was also believed to have been a prophetess who could communicate with birds warning her of an upcoming battle. Much about the rest of her life is shrouded in myth and legend, but she has become something of a heroine for the various Berber ethnic groups, who see her as a champion against Arab domination.
Many other artistic depictions of al-Kahina portray her as a pale-skinned, Arab- or even European-looking woman in Islamic garb, but Arab chroniclers apparently described her as dark-skinned and “great of hair”, which may imply either a big Afro or long dreadlocks for her. Furthermore, it is more likely her garb was the loose tunic common to North Africans at that time rather than the heavier clothing associated with modern Islamic cultures.
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On the bough of a tree emerging up from the canopy of the Central African rainforest rests a yawning African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus). The lion may lord over the open savannas elsewhere on the continent, but in the deep jungles it is the stealthy and adaptable leopard that reigns as the apex predator.
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This is a small penciled portrait of Zugutan, a character who appears in the third act of my novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony". Living in the highlands east of Troy, she and her clan are among the last of the Pelasgians, a dark-skinned and blue-eyed people aboriginal to the Aegean region prior to the arrival of the Greeks and Trojans’ ancestors. Zugutan serves as the clan shaman, smoking cannabis to commune with the spirits of her people’s ancestors. Little could she have anticipated a band of strange “outlanders” coming to her for aid against a threat larger than she could have imagined…
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Bek, the younger brother of Itaweret from my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony, is equipped to defend the Kemetian (ancient Egyptian) colony of Per-Pehu from attack by the tyrannical Scylax of Mycenae. His primary weapon is a copper-headed mace, but he also carries a cowhide shield for protection (hide shields were how Egyptian warriors usually fended off enemy blows, as most did not bother with body armor due to the hot climate of their native land).
If you’re wondering why Bek isn’t as heavily muscled as most of my other male characters, he’s supposed to be a lanky teenager. It’s really weird how we expect adolescents to have physiques like those of post-pubescent adults since they’re usually portrayed by twenty- and thirty-something actors in Hollywood movies. That must do a lot of damage to many teenagers’ body images.
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I posed this random Paleolithic huntress to make it look as if she was tracking her quarry through the savanna undergrowth (or whatever habitat you prefer to imagine her in).
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I did this artwork as a gift to cheer up a friend of mine who had lost his spouse to COVID-19. It’s a character of his design named Pareyio, an African warrior monk armed with a bo staff.
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A little doodle of the head of Giganotosaurus carolinii, a predator from the Middle Cretaceous of South America which (along with T. rex and Spinosaurus) ranks among the largest theropod dinosaurs currently known from the fossil record.
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Tyrannosaurus rex has a yawn. You’re not doing the whole “apex predator” thing right if you don’t wear yourself out at least once in a while.
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This would be a headshot of Stegosaurus ungulatus, from the Late Jurassic of North America. Some paleontologists think that, unlike most ornithischian dinosaurs, stegosaurs would have sported a keratinous beak only on their lower jaw, with the tip of the upper jaw being covered in skin. It looks a little weird to me, but that’s going to be the case with almost any revision of an iconic dinosaur’s appearance.
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I did a portrait of my character Itaweret using charcoal pencils today!
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This is a side-view portrait of the Achaemenid Persian Shah Cyrus II (590-529 BC), better known as Cyrus the Great. He was the prolific conqueror who transformed Persia into the superpower of western Asia, expanding its imperial borders between the Aegean Sea to the west and the Indus River Valley to the east. He was also the Shah who freed the Hebrew people from captivity in Babylonia and allowed them to return to their homeland in Palestine.
As far as warmongering imperialists go, Cyrus seems to have been rather tolerant and cosmopolitan, allowing the disparate peoples of his domain to practice their indigenous customs and religions instead of forcing the Persian way of life onto them. He would even offer sacrifices to provincial deities as a way of honoring his foreign subjects. Future generations of Persians would venerate his legacy as the esteemed founder of their dominion over the eastern Mediterranean basin.
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This pencil-drawn Tyrannosaurus rex is taking a relaxed stroll across the page. Weighing up to nine tons, it probably could never run faster than 25 miles per hour, but that would have been more than adequate for catching up to the other large dinosaurs of its habitat.
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This is a front-view facial portrait of Mut, the “Mother Goddess” of the ancient Egyptian pantheon who rose to prominence during their Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC). The hieroglyphs on her choker spell out her name, and her skin is supposed to be literally black like the statues of black diorite the Egyptians would carve.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Armed with a spear and her trusty Kaprosuchus, this warrior is patrolling the jungle within her people’s territory. Not only does her crocodyliform pet boast powerful jaws with prominent sharp teeth, but its keen sense of smell can detect prey or trouble from miles away!
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This would be an ancient Egyptian war chariot, manned by the Pharaoh himself and his loyal driver. Although chariots along with horses would have been introduced into Egypt from western Asia by the Hyksos in the second millennium BC, the Egyptians would thereafter incorporate these Bronze Age machines into their indigenous military and transportation systems, modifying their design to better suit their needs.
Whereas West Asian nations like the Hittites typically used chariots as heavy “tanks” to trample the enemy, the aristocratic class of Egyptian charioteers (known as maryannu) would take advantage of their lighter designs’ more rapid speed by using them like light cavalry, often firing arrows from the carriage with a composite bow. They were most useful for preying on broken ranks of enemy infantry.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a simple facial portrait of the Ptolemaic Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII (that is, the Cleopatra everyone knows) which I rendered using a set of graphite pencils. I referenced her facial features and cornrowed hairstyle from a reconstruction done in 2008 following the advice of the classicist Sally Ann-Ashton (who, in turn, based her conclusions on various sculptures of Cleopatra).
The skin tone came out a little darker than I expected (I was aiming for a caramel-brown color), but I think I like it this way now.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This started as a simple doodle of a random smiling African woman, but then I wanted to give her more of a backstory (as happens sometimes when I draw portraits). So I decided to identify her as my representation of Salammbo, a priestess of Tanit from ancient Carthage who is the titular character of an 1862 novel by the French author Gustave Flaubert.
Flaubert’s novel takes place during the Mercenary Revolt of 241 BC, with Salammbo having to retrieve a sacred veil after the Libyan mercenary Matho (who lusts after her) steals it. The two eventually come together to make love, but the story ends tragically for both of them, with Salammbo dying of shock upon watching her lover be tortured in anticipation of his execution at the hands of the Carthaginian state.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a map I created for a short story that I started back in 2018, but had shelved until I dug it up and finished it today. It's a high-seas adventure set in the Red Sea circa 100 AD, with the protagonist being a Kushite admiral hunting down Arabian pirates. Once I have the whole thing reviewed and polished, I'll post it on my official website's writing blog and maybe put it in a future short-story collection.
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And a couple of character arts to go with that map for my newest story...
Nensela, the protagonist of our story. She's on a personal mission to hunt down the Arabian pirates who took away her brother Akhraten when she was a girl. However, she is in for a nasty surprise when she discovers what truly happened to him.
Those ivory pieces hanging from her necklace are fly medals, which in the ancient Egyptian and Kushite cultures were awarded to warriors for demonstrating martial bravery.
And here is Yasmina bint Faruq, our antagonist. Born to the Sheikh of al-Mukha on the coast of the Himyarite kingdom in southern Arabia, Yasmina fled to the high seas to escape an arranged marriage, eventually slashing her way to the leadership of a piratical army known as the Scorpions of the Sea. It is up to Nensela, as Admiral of Kush, to bring a stop to Yasmina's reign of terror!
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Few things in life are more comfortable than being in the warm embrace of a loved one, as both partners in this couple can attest.
It’s been a while since I last did a couple like this. I would draw them much more often in the past, but over time they’ve appeared less regularly in my artistic output. I am not sure why. Maybe it’s because doing romantic art like this isn’t perceived as traditionally manly, even though I’ve never been a stereotypical macho “alpha male”. I guess even dudes like me are a little too worried about living up to conventional ideals about gender.
Oh, well, I like doing this kind of art anyway, and I am happy to have returned to it.
If you’re wondering what cultures these two are from, he is a Norseman from Scandinavia and she is from the medieval West African kingdom of Wagadou (sometimes called Ghana, despite being located further north in the region than modern Ghana).
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I was practicing an approach to shading called “hatching” here. It was inspired by the shading style of some inked comic-book art.
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Gallimimus bullatus was a fairly large ornithomimid dinosaur which raced across the floodplains of eastern Asia around seventy million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Familiar to the general public through its portrayal in Jurassic Park and its sequels, Gallimimus is one of three dinosaur taxa (the others being Compsognathus and Velociraptor) featured in the franchise which would likely have sported a coat of feathers in real life. Gallimimus could probably run at a top speed between 29 and 34 miles per hour, less than a modern ostrich but fast enough to escape the predators of its habitat. It may have eaten both plant and animal matter, with some scientists proposing it was a filter feeder that hung around wet environments.
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4,000 years ago in the Indus Valley of what will someday be modern Pakistan, a Harappan huntress is attacking a troublesome tiger from atop her elephant.
Although the region is dominated by arid desert today, in ancient times the floodplains of the Indus would have supported a variety of South Asian wildlife such as Indian elephants, one-horned rhinoceros, zebu, and Bengal tigers. The Harappan peoples, who laid the foundation of South Asian urban civilization between 3300-1900 BC, would have represented all the aforementioned species and many more in their artwork.
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This would be a quick and small pencil doodle of the face of Nensela, a Kushite admiral who is the protagonist of my short story “Scorpions of the Sea”.
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“She’d swing through the trees with the greatest of ease, that daring young woman on the swinging liana…”
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This would be a simple sketch I did to practice my male anatomy some more. When I started out drawing, I found male characters a more intimidating prospect than female ones since you have to pay closer attention to the muscular anatomy, but now I think I have a better hang of both sexes. I still prefer to draw women most of the time, but that’s because they’re what I’m “oriented” towards if you know what I mean (if I were gay, on the other hand, I’d probably be drawing men more often than women. Which is to say, I like to draw what I’m attracted to).
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This is a quick commission I did for one of my DeviantArt followers. He wanted a design for a fictional, so-far-unnamed species of small (as in two feet tall and six feet long) dromaeosaurid with a spotted hide pattern.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a huntress representing the Sao civilization, a culture (or grouping of related cultures) that thrived in fortified towns along the Chari River in southern Chad between the sixth century BC to the sixteenth century AD. Among the artifacts this Central African culture left behind are sculptures of terracotta and bronze as well as funeral urns in which they buried their dead. A number of ethnic groups in the area of Chad and Cameroon, such as the Kanembu, Kotoko, and Sara, claim descent from the Sao, and some legends describe these bygone people as a race of giants.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I can make desktop wallpapers using my artwork too!
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I did this African warrior queen as a commission for an Italian author with the pseudonym “Kopunches”, who wanted a character illustration to go with one of his novels.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And now for a little "throwback" post...
I did this drawing of a Chinese fire lancer, one of the earliest gunpowder warriors in history, back in 2018. A couple of weeks ago, a rep from Dorling Kindersley asked me for permission to use this in one of their books (they're the publisher behind those Eyewitness books I had as a kid). I let them have it for free, since I didn't know what to charge them when they asked about a fee. Probably should have asked for a small payment in retrospect, but I'm still flattered that DK of all publishers reached out to me about my work.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is the Early Cretaceous in South America, 112 million years ago, and these Tupandactylus imperator are ready to tear into the carcass of a recently deceased sauropod dinosaur. Tupandactylus was a member of a family of pterosaurs known as the Tapejaridae, which stand apart from other pterosaurs by virtue of their humongous fin-shaped head crests. Some of these pterosaurs may have been omnivores as likely to eat plant matter as meat, but others may have hunted relatively large prey like modern raptorial birds.
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Between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the Ukrainian game development studio Action Forms produced a trilogy of hunting simulation games known as the Carnivores series, in which the player could hunt prehistoric wildlife on an alien planet. The first two games in the trilogy focused on dinosaurs as the game animals whereas the third, Carnivores: Ice Age, switched to Cenozoic animals in a cold polar environment. Since the dinosaurs in the first two Carnivores games were reconstructed according to a combination of "retro" and 1990s aesthetics, I've taken it upon myself to redesign them to better mirror modern ideas of dinosaurs.
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This is my rendition of a Roman legionary decked out in the iconic lorica segmentata armor, which became its most popular between the first and third centuries AD. The weapon he is holding is a type of javelin called a pilum, which the Romans would have chucked at their enemies before switching to their gladii (swords) for hand-to-hand combat.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Did these three drawings on my trip to NYC today.
This is a pencil-drawn portrait of Hannibal Barca, the famous Carthaginian general known for his campaign against the Roman Republic. Among his most famous feats was leading his army, including a corps of African war elephants, across the Alps on the way to the Italian peninsula. Later, when crossing a wetland in Italy, Hannibal got an infection in his right eye and had it removed. Although his campaign to subjugate Rome was ultimately unsuccessful, Hannibal nonetheless won acclaim for his military brilliance, particularly during the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC.
When depicting Hannibal here, I wanted him to look like a mixture between the Phoenician colonists who founded Carthage and the native African population. However, I will admit he came out looking a bit darker than I intended (I was aiming for a .dark bronze or coppery skin tone).
I drew this tiger entirely from memory. Considering that, I have to say it came out relatively well.
It’s a clash of martial arts traditions as this Chinese Shaolin monk must use his kung fu abilities to fend off a Japanese ninja!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a pencil drawing of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus, the apex predator of Middle Cretaceous North Africa around 100 million years ago. It was almost the size of T. rex and would have preyed on other large dinosaurs in its hot and humid habitat, possibly including the giant piscivorous theropod Spinosaurus.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Today, I wanted to share a work-in-progress which I will color once I get back home. It shows different cultures' variations of the "Mother and Child" artistic motif.
The first mother is from Neolithic Africa and is inspired by various African "maternity figures". The second is the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis with her son Horus, also based on sculptural representations. The third is the Biblical Miriam of Nazareth with baby Yeshua, and the fourth is a medieval Europeanized version of Mary and Jesus.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A pencil illustration I did showing different variations of the "Mother and Child" artistic motif across time and space. The first mother is from Neolithic Africa and is inspired by various African "maternity figures". The second is the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis with her son Horus, also based on sculptural representations. The third is the Biblical Miriam of Nazareth with baby Yeshua, and the fourth is a medieval Europeanized version of Mary and Jesus.
I will do a digitally colored version of this artwork soon!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I drew this tough cookie in my sketchbook on the way back home from a trip to New York City. She came out resembling the heroines of old blaxploitation movies from the 1970s.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This composition shows the evolution of an enduring and ancient artistic motif which we may call the “Mother and Child”. The first mother is from Neolithic Africa and is inspired by various African sculptures known as “maternity figures”. The second is the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis with her son Horus, also based on sculptural representations. The third is the Biblical Miriam of Nazareth with baby Yeshua, and the fourth is based on medieval European depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I created this artwork as a sort of logo for use on T-shirts and other merchandise. A beautiful warrior woman riding a dinosaur is a subject that will never get old for me!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It may look like something out of a cheesy old monster cartoon, but this is actually a personal piece I did to illustrate something that has been afflicting me for years now, if not my whole life.
There’s this voice inside my head that speaks to me at least once a day, a voice that is always negative and putting me down. It’s always telling me that I’m worth nothing and that, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be good enough. Sometimes it quotes people who have criticized me, taunting me with their words over and over again. And, very often, it tells me I’d be better off dead than alive. It’s like my brain turns into this horrible monster that lives to see me suffer.
You have that voice in your head too, don’t you? Don’t we all have it?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Among all the monsters of Greek mythology, Medusa is not only one of the most famous, but she also has one of the most tragic stories behind her. One of three sisters known as the Gorgons, she was originally considered so beautiful that the sea god Poseidon lusted after her, forcing himself upon her in the temple of Athena. As if being raped was not a cruel enough fate for Medusa, the goddess Athena transformed her into a monster with snakes for hair and a gaze that could turn people to stone as punishment for defiling her temple. In the end, Medusa found herself slain and decapitated by the demigod Perseus. Ancient myths can be so mean-spirited sometimes.
If you’re wondering why I gave Medusa here an African appearance, a Greek novelist in the 2nd century BC identified her homeland as being located within Libya, which was then the Greek term for all of northern Africa. Earlier, the historian Herodotus reported that some of the native people there venerated Medusa as a sort of serpentine deity.
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This is a head portrait of Ceratosaurus nasicornis, one of the major predators of Late Jurassic North America. I have to say that, looking at its skull, the dinosaur’s teeth are ridiculously long, proportionately speaking!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A colorization I did of an ancient coin depicting the profile of Massinissa (202-148 BC), a Numidian chieftain from ancient North Africa.
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This is a commissioned artwork I did for someone who wanted a North African huntress armed with a club and squatting on a rock. Her tattoos are inspired by those of the Amazigh (or Berber) peoples of northwestern Africa.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
So you decided to put berber tatoos on a Senegalese woman?
why?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: So you decided to put berber tatoos on a Senegalese woman?
why?
She's not supposed to be Senegalese. I asked the commissioner which region of North Africa they wanted the character to be from, and they said either Tunisia or Libya.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Anyway... I did another artwork of that North African huntress character I was recently commissioned to draw, but this time, it was on my own initiative since I like the character enough. The name my customer and I have agreed on for her is Malika, and while her exact homeland remains undetermined, it is either in what is now Libya or Tunisia.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
The paleontologist Gregory S. Paul has recently published a paper arguing that Tyrannosaurus rex should be divided into three species, with the other two being the larger and older Tyrannosaurus imperator and the smaller and daintier Tyrannosaurus regina. So far, the argument doesn’t seem to have persuaded the paleontological community that much, and I am inclined to trust their expert judgment on it. Nonetheless, the occasion did inspire me to draw my all-time favorite dinosaur again, so that’s a plus.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: This would be my artistic interpretation of the myth of Saint George rescuing a princess from sacrifice to a dragon. Although St. George has become the patron saint of England, he didn’t start out as the medieval knight of popular imagination. Instead he was a Roman soldier named Georgius from the province of Cappadocia, in what is now Turkey. Furthermore, his episode with the dragon and the princess took place in “Libya”, which referred to the entire continent of Africa back in antiquity. In some versions of the myth, the princess helps by offering the girdle around her clothes as a leash to capture the beast around the neck.
Also, dragons in older traditions were portrayed as resembling giant snakes rather than the more lizard- or dinosaur-like creatures we imagine nowadays. That’s why this dragon looks rather like an oversized python.
Gave this a few tweaks tonight. The woman's mouth isn't so big, and the anatomy of the dragon's mouth has been fixed as well. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrayal of the semitropical jungles that covered much of western North America (or “Laramidia”) during the Late Cretaceous Period, the time of dinosaurs such as Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus. Flowering plants such as palms and broadleaf trees were taking over during this period, but they would have coexisted with older plant lineages such as ferns, cycads, gingkos, and conifers related to redwood, bald cypress, and monkey-puzzle trees. Perhaps the best modern-day analog for this type of ecosystem would be the forests and wetlands of Florida in the southeastern United States of America.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is Takhaet, one of my original characters, in a crouching pose. She is an experienced warrior from New Kingdom Egypt who takes care of her niece Nebet and has held onto the traditional Egyptian faith even after the Pharaoh Akhenaten set out to abolish it in favor of his "Atenist" heresy. She is the protagonist of two of my short stories, "The Battle Roar of Sekhmet" and "Mayhem in the Menagerie".
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Here we have two of my ancient Egyptian characters, the priestess Itaweret (left) and the warrior Takhaet (right), greeting one another with a friendly fist bump. They may be from separate stories as well as separate points in time (Itaweret is from 1600 BC in an alternate timeline whereas Takhaet lives around two and a half centuries later), but I like to imagine that, were they to ever meet, they would get along fine or maybe even become best friends!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This illustration shows three characters from a new novel I’ve been working on called “Women of the Plains”, which is set in prehistoric Africa around 100,000 years ago. The woman in the center is a specimen of early Homo sapiens named Oja, the story’s protagonist, whereas the ones behind her are her friends Uru (left) and Namak (right). As of the current draft, it’s a tale of intercultural interaction and conflict in which these nomadic hunter-gatherers encounter another culture of people who have settled in permanent villages alongside rivers.
Once I get the book done, it would be cool if I could incorporate this illustration into the novel’s front cover!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
There's a very good reason we call Triceratops a herbivore, after all.
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This Tyrannosaurus rex is jogging through the semitropical jungles along the coast of southern Laramidia (western North America) a little over 66 million years ago.
This is actually a combination of two separate artworks I created earlier, with the T. rex being plopped down on the background. Isn’t it amazing what layers in digital art software can let you do?
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Sobekneferu (or Nefrusobek) was another one of ancient Egypt’s small number of female Pharaohs, taking over from her brother and husband Amenemhat IV during the 18th century BC. Her reign, which lasted no more than four years, marked the end of Egypt’s twelfth dynasty and the period of their history called the Middle Kingdom, after which the northern part of the country came under the dominion of Semitic-speaking immigrants from Palestine that would be remembered as the Hyksos (“shepherd kings”).
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This bad grrl got her start as a pencil drawing I did on a plane trip home from New York. Then I added some color to her in Clip Studio Paint, and now here we are!
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Archelon ischyros is the largest sea turtle known to have ever lived, with a weight of two tons and a shell breadth of around 15 feet. It swam in the shallow sea covering central North America around 80 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Equipped with a sharp beak, it would likely have been a carnivore feeding on other marine creatures.
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These Viking marauders, hungry for the gold and other riches of tropical Africa, have sailed all the way to the Gulf of Guinea and are scouting the coast for a place to disembark and begin their most daring raid yet!
As far as I know, there’s no actual evidence of the Vikings actually having sailed this far south, but considering they’re known to have raided the North African coast as well as establishing colonies as far afield as Canada, them venturing to the regions of Africa beyond the Sahara Desert doesn’t sound so ridiculous to me. It’s a fun scenario to imagine nonetheless.
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The ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertari (not to be confused with the earlier Nefertiti) is grimacing with disgust at something here. I originally set out to simply draw another portrait of her, but I wanted to inject a bit more emotion than the standard regal smile, hence this.
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This is my adaptation of a scene in Gustave Flaubert’s classic historical-fiction novel Salammbo, which is set in ancient Carthage during the time of the Mercenary War (241-237 BC). In this scene, the titular Carthaginian priestess Salammbo performs a special ritual in which she strips herself nude and dances with a sacred python. It’s been a popular scene for illustrators to adapt ever since the novel’s publication in 1862 (for what should be self-evident reasons), and I wanted to do my own take on it. Of course, I had to put a few skimpy garments on Salammbo rather than making her totally nude to make the piece “safe for work”.
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This male and female Tyrannosaurus rex are showing some romantic affection to one another. Right now, we don’t know how to tell male and female tyrannosaurs apart in the fossil record, but it’s plausible that the males may have sported brighter colors as we see in present-day birds and reptiles.
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I wanted this character to look like a “femme fatale” from the old film noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s, right down to the color palette. I like how the grayscale effect came out here.
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This is a "cover art" illustration I did to go with a short story I've recently drafted which is titled "The Black Cross". It's a detective story set in San Diego in 1940, with the protagonist (left) being a private eye who is called on to recover a black stone cross from Central Africa that is believed to be associated with a legendary figure called Prester John. But little does he know the true origin or significance of the cross...
As for the woman on the right of the composition, she comes in later in the story, but I won't spoil it for you here. Suffice to say she is connected to the titular cross in an important way.
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Tutankhamun (r. 1336-1327 BC), or “King Tut”, has become perhaps the most famous of ancient Egypt’s Pharaohs ever since the archaeologist Howard Carter discovered his tomb in the Valley of Kings near Luxor in 1922. Coming from a heavily inbred royal family, Tutankhamun was probably never the healthiest or most conventionally attractive individual, what with physical traits like a cleft palate, a slightly sidewards-curving spine, and a clubbed left foot, and he would have been eighteen or nineteen when he died, possibly from malaria (he would have ascended the throne around age nine). His biggest accomplishment during his short reign appears to have been reversing his predecessor Akhenaten’s controversial abolition of the traditional Egyptian faith in favor of a monotheistic veneration of a solar deity known as the Aten.
Ironically, Tutankhamun’s relative lack of enduring fame among his native people might have protected his tomb from robbery over the centuries, hence the wealth of artifacts Carter’s expedition was able to find in it. Makes you wonder what would have lain in the tombs of the more popular Pharaohs before they got emptied…
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150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period, Brontosaurus excelsus rears up on its hind legs to browse the foliage of the taller trees on the savanna. I don’t know if it is considered plausible anymore, but I remember that sauropod dinosaurs were commonly depicted as being able to stand up on their hind legs like this either to feed on higher vegetation or to intimidate predators.
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It's Throwback Thursday again, so let me share this 2019 artwork I did of Hatshepsut. Some aspects of her anatomy look a little wonky to me now, but I still like the energy (and sex appeal) she still exudes three years later.
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Two spearmen stand guard at the entrance of a temple complex situated in the kingdom of Kush, along the Nile River in northern Sudan. This scene was among the most exhausting to work on, in no small part due to all the perspective work I had to do for the architecture.
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I wanted to draw another woman with an Afro, but I was stuck on what sort of “theme” to give her to make the portrait more interesting. What I went with, in the end, was naming her “Afrodite” as a play on the name of the Greek love goddess Aphrodite. You could say this is how Aphrodite (or Venus as the Romans called her) would look if her cult were to spread into Africa.
Fun fact: some scholars think the cult of Aphrodite evolved from that of West Asian deities like the Sumerian Inanna, the Babylonian Ishtar, and the Canaanite or Phoenician Astarte.
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This is a commission I did for a gentleman who is working on a sort of “speculative evolution” project. He wanted me to draw a giant descendent of the theropod Neovenator hanging out with three of its youngsters on a savanna landscape.
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This bull Brachiosaurus altithorax is singing a mating song through an inflatable sac attached to its nostril. The inspiration for this artwork came from a trailer for the documentary Prehistoric Planet which featured sauropods with similar sacs running down the bottom of their necks. I felt that, if sauropods had such sacs at all, they would be attached to the nostrils (and therefore connected to the dinosaur’s vocalization and respiratory systems) rather than the skin of the neck. In either case, it would be a speculative possibility rather than confirmed by paleontological data thus far.
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This ancient Egyptian woman is carrying a pot of water on her head. For some reason, women carrying loads on their heads seems to be a ubiquitous and ancient tradition not only throughout Africa but in other parts of the so-called Global South, such as in South Asia and Latin America.
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This is a swordsman from the kingdom of Benin, which controlled the area of southwestern Nigeria in West Africa between 1440 and 1897 AD (it is not to be confused with the modern country of Benin, the territory of which corresponds more closely to another pre-colonial West African kingdom called Dahomey). As shown by their famous brass plaques, the warriors of Benin seemed to have been among the most heavily armored in the region. Honestly, I found that armor so elaborate that it proved rather challenging to draw using reference.
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A digitally colorized version of my earlier pencil drawing of an ancient Egyptian woman carrying a pot of water on her head. The trick I employed was to create a layer above the drawing in Photoshop that I set to the "Overlay" blending mode and painted the colors on that layer.
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This is my concept for a fantasy tyrannosaurid named Thanatotyrannus imperator (“death tyrant emperor”). Slightly larger and more heavily armored than the Tyrannosaurus rex of our world, this mighty beast is the apex predator of its jungle domain, using its bone-crushing jaws to dispatch the other large dinosaurs it preys upon. You can think of this design as being like an upgraded version of T. rex!
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This is my artistic reinterpretation of the iconic character Tarzan of the Apes as a man of indigenous African descent, instead of the White Englishman he was in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and their various cinematic adaptations. Growing up, the Disney adaptation was my favorite of their whole animated catalog, and I've also read several of the Burroughs novels, but unfortunately, the character's "Mighty White Savior" connotations appear to have made him less fashionable in recent years.
I don't actually want Disney to give Tarzan the "live-action remake" treatment, since most of their other remakes have felt like soulless cash grabs to me, but if they or any other studio wants to bring the character to life again, I think it would be totally sweet if they made him African by origin as well as by residence.
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Giganotosaurus carolinii was a theropod dinosaur of the carcharodontosaurid lineage that prowled South America between 99 and 97 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. When it was first discovered in the 1990s, much was made about how it could have been even larger than the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, yet further research has suggested that the two dinosaur species were of roughly similar size, with T. rex possibly being more heavily built and therefore more massive. Nonetheless, Giganotosaurus would have been a formidable predator in its own right, likely preying on long-necked sauropods such as Andesaurus and Limaysaurus.
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Merneith was a queen from the very first dynasty of a unified Egyptian kingdom, with her husband Djet being that dynasty’s fourth Pharaoh. When Djet passed away sometime before 2950 BC, their son Den would have been too young to take the throne, so Merneith would have acted as a ruling regent in his place (the exact length of her reign remains undetermined). Merneith may have actually been the second woman in Egyptian history to assume the throne temporarily, with the first one (Neithhotep) being none other than the spouse of the dynasty’s founder Narmer himself.
In this picture, Merneith is wearing a combination of the red crown of Lower Egypt and the white crown of Upper Egypt, representing the union of these two regions into one kingdom under Narmer.
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This would be a rough sketch of an illustration I'm doing to celebrate the first anniversary of my debut novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony", which was published on April 27th last year. Normally I would do the rough sketch with a pencil on paper before scanning it into my machine and doing the inking and coloring in Clip Studio Paint, but this time I decided to do the whole process on the computer.
Now I need to decide what kind of background (if any) to give these characters...
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This is a portrait of a pre-Columbian Maya ruler, or ahau. Unlike the later Aztec who settled further north in Mesoamerica, the Maya never had a unified empire but rather an assortment of monarchic city-states which frequently fought with one another, often to obtain captives for ritual “offerings”. Although many of the Maya urban centers in the southern parts of their domain would be abandoned in the 8th to 9th centuries AD, possibly as a result of drought brought about by climate change, the Maya civilization as a whole continued to endure thereafter until the Spanish invasion in the 1500s. Today, there are about eight million Maya people still living, with most of them living in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.
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Artist's Commentary
I did this illustration to celebrate the first anniversary of my debut novel Priestess of the Lost Colony, which I got published on April 27th, 2021. The characters here would be the main cast of the novel assembled together in the Greek countryside, with the Egyptian goddess Mut gazing over the scene from the heavens.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Itaweret: An Egyptian priestess serving the goddess Mut who grew up in the colonial settlement of Per-Pehu on the coast of Greece. When the warlike Scylax of Mycenae sacks the colony and enslaves its inhabitants, it is up to Itaweret to liberate what remains of her people. She is the story's main protagonist.
Bek: Itaweret's teenaged younger brother, who accompanies her on her quest after leading a failed defense against Scylax.
Philos: A Greek shepherd boy who develops a crush on Itaweret and joins her and Bek after a startling revelation about his true heritage. He has a tame lion named Xiphos.
Scylax of Mycenae: The tyrannical ruler of the Greek city-state of Mycenae and the story's main antagonist.
Kleno: Scylax's older sister and partner in crime, a priestess who spies on our heroes with the aid of the goddess Athena (represented here in owl form).
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This portrait of a pre-Columbian Maya queen as a follow-up to my earlier one of a male Maya king. Although the majority of Maya rulers would have been men, as with other ancient civilizations, there are a few instances of women attaining power as rulers. Among the most remarkable was Lady Six Sky (682-741 AD), who founded her own dynasty reigning over the city of Naranjo. Some monuments even show her trampling captives as a warrior queen, a rare representation for women in Maya art.
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The daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt has rescued an infant of Hebrew descent from the Nile waters and would like to adopt her into the royal family. Little does she know the significance of her heroic compassion…
I did this scene in honor of the Jewish holiday of Passover. I’m not Jewish or religious in any sense, but hey, if other artists can depict scenes from ancient mythologies without believing in those myths, I think it’s well within my right to depict characters and scenes from the Abrahamic scriptures.
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In Greek mythology, Andromeda was a princess of Aethiopia (which at the time usually referred, not to the region of modern Ethiopia, but to what we now call Sudan, especially the kingdom of Kush), whom, according to her boastful mother Queen Cassiopeia, was more beautiful than the Nereid sea nymphs who accompanied Poseidon. To punish the queen for her hubris, the sea god sent the monster Cetus to terrorize the Aethiopian coast. Only by sacrificing Andromeda to Cetus's appetite could the Aethiopians enjoy a respite from its attacks.
Thankfully for Andromeda, the Greek demigod Perseus came over to slay the monster the moment she was about to be eaten. Afterward, Perseus and Andromeda married, had seven sons and two daughters, and founded the city-state of Mycenae.
For this portrayal, I based Cetus's appearance on the Livyatan melvelli, a cousin of the modern sperm whale which prowled the seas during the Miocene epoch between 10 and 9 million years ago. Since the name of Cetus is related to our modern word "cetacean", I figured a whale would make the most logical base for his design.
(By the way, this is a redraw of a piece I did back in 2018 since I thought Andromeda's anatomical proportions were rather wonky in the original.)
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Antalas (r. 530-548 AD) was a chieftain of a Christianized people in North Africa known as the Frexenses, who played a major role in the conflicts between the Byzantine Roman Empire and various indigenous peoples in the North African provinces.
At first, Antalas was an ally of the Byzantines after they captured the area from the Germanic Vandals, whom he had fought previously. However, the relationship between Constantinople and Antalas soured when the Byzantines had his brother Guarizilla executed after a revolt in 543. A series of bloody struggles between the North African locals and their Byzantine overlords ensued, but when the Byzantines won the Battle of the Fields of Cato in 548, Antalas and his fellow African chieftains found themselves forced back into submission. The Byzantine Empire would thereafter maintain control of the area until the invasion of Arab Muslim armies in the late seventh century AD.
I have not found any surviving portraits showing how Antalas may have looked, so I ended up basing his dreadlock-like hairstyle on those worn by “Moorish” or Numidian cavalry on the Roman Trajan’s column.
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I did this scene as a commission for a client who wanted a village street scene for a fictional culture he created called the Taluni. They’re supposed to be of Celtic origin, but with some African genetic admixture that would help them adapt to the hotter savanna environment they’ve moved into. Oh, and there are dinosaurs in this fantasy setting as well.
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These two are mounted skirmishers from early medieval North Africa such as those that assisted the Muslim conquest of Spain in the early eighth century AD. One of the North African ethnic groups recruited in the Islamic armies of the time, the Zenata, would lend their name to the terms “genitour” and “jinete”, the latter referring to horsemen in Spanish. More recently, the Genitours have become memorialized as one of the unique units the Berber civilization can train in the real-time strategy game Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
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Rajaraja I (947-1014 CE), also known as Rajaraja the Great, was one of the mightiest rulers of the Chola dynasty which dominated southern India during the Middle Ages. His campaigns of conquest extended Chola control as far afield as northern Sri Lanka and the Maldives island chain. He also commissioned the construction of the Brihadisvara Temple in Thanjavur, the Chola capital, to honor the Hindu deity Shiva. His dynastic successors would go on to extend Chola’s realm of influence all the way to Malaysia and Sumutra.
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Hannibal Barca, the mighty Carthaginian general, stands mounted on the back of his war elephant Surus as they cross the Italian countryside in 216 BC. Of the thirty-seven elephants that Hannibal took with him on his campaign against the Roman Republic, Surus was the one that survived the brutal crossing of the Alps. The meaning of the elephant’s name has two possible translations. One is “the Syrian” (suggesting that it was an Asian elephant instead of the African elephants the Carthaginians normally used), and the other is “stake” in reference to its tusks (one of which was described as broken). The latter interpretation is what I went with since I personally feel an African savanna elephant would make a more intimidating mount than the smaller Asian species.
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Andrewsarchus mongoliensis was a large carnivorous mammal that roamed East Asia during the middle Eocene epoch, between 43 and 41 million years ago. It possibly weighed up to one ton and reached six feet high at the shoulder, although so far only its skull has been recovered. Its closest living relatives are the cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and hippopotamuses, and I wanted to reflect that in my portrayal of this animal. The tubercules on its snout are inspired by those of the humpback whale.
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This would be a young princess from the Empire of Mali, one of the mightiest civilizations of medieval West Africa. Although Islam was the official religion of Mali, they nonetheless retained many customs and beliefs of their pre-Islamic forerunners in the region. One visitor from Morocco, the prolific traveler Ibn Battuta, complained that many of the women in the Malian royal household, including the Mansa’s own daughters, went around naked. Not that I would blame them, since it can get really hot over there in West Africa!
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In the ancient Egyptian pantheon, Hathor (or Het-Heru) was the goddess of love and sexuality, fertility, and joy, exemplifying the Egyptian ideal of femininity. You could say she was their equivalent to the Greek Aphrodite, the Norse Freyja, or the Yoruba Oshun. Although normally a benevolent and motherly deity, Hathor had a fierce side to her as well, for she could transform into the lioness-headed warrior goddess Sekhmet. Otherwise, the animal Hathor was associated with the most was the cow, whose form she could sometimes assume.
I have to say that goddesses of love like Hathor can be a joy to depict, as it gives me yet another pretext to draw a voluptuous woman. And I can never get enough of those!
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It’s a balmy summer day in the Late Cretaceous of Alaska, and this Nanuqsaurus hoglundi is taking a leisurely stroll through the woods. A lot of paleoartists nowadays like to depict this dinosaur and others in its environment in winter scenes since dinosaurs in the snow seems like such a novel concept, but I wanted to do something a bit different by showing the creature in its habitat during the warmer part of the year.
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These are my designs for culturally diverse skins for the villager units in the real-time strategy game Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. The default skins already in the game (shown in the upper left corner) would go to all the game's European civilizations, while the designs I created myself are for the non-European civilizations. Here's to hoping the AoE2: DE dev team develops an official culturally diverse skin pack for the game, possibly as downloadable content if not a free update.
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This young woman from ancient Carthage has her eyes closed in deep contemplation, or possibly meditation. What could she be thinking?
As far as ancient civilizations go, not so much has survived from the Carthaginian civilization, in no small part because their Roman adversaries made a point of destroying every trace of it after conquering them in 146 BC and then building on top of its ruins. It’s a terrible shame from an archaeological standpoint that so much was lost, but on the bright side, at least I have a little more creative leeway in reconstructing how the Carthaginian people and culture may have looked.
When designing this character’s appearance, I mixed elements from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and North African Amazigh cultures. At the peak of its power, Carthage would have controlled much of the western Mediterranean basin, so they probably mixed influences from all over the region anyway.
UPDATE: And here's a colorized version: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In 500 BC, during the region of the Shah Darius I (522-496 BC), the Achaemenid Persian Empire was perhaps the largest in the world. It stretched from Macedonia to the west, the Indus Valley to the east, and Egypt to the south.
With so many different cultures under their domain, the Persians seem to have embraced tolerance of native customs for the most part, but they were not always popular with their subjects. When Alexander “the Great” of Macedonia invaded Egypt in 322 BC as part of his long campaign against Persia, for example, the Egyptians welcomed him as a liberator. In the end, it was Alexander and his Greco-Macedonian army who brought an end to Achaemenid Persia, with the spoils being divided among his generals after his death.
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I was smitten enough with my earlier portrait of a Carthaginian woman that I drew her again, this time with a smile. I think she’s being flirty here.
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And now my Carthaginian lady has a husband! These two would be a well-to-do couple from the civilization of ancient Carthage, a empire based in North Africa which dominated much of the western Mediterranean basin between the ninth and second centuries BC. The man hails from areas under Carthaginian influence in the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) whereas the woman is of native North African descent. With this picture, I wanted to illustrate the probable diversity of the Carthaginian population in keeping with its transcontinental nature.
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Megaraptor namunhuaiquii was a fairly large predatory dinosaur that hunted in South America during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 91 and 88 million years ago. When paleontologists first discovered its fossilized talons in the 1990s, they interpreted them as coming from a giant dromaeosaurid related to the infamous Velociraptor and Deinonychus. However, subsequent discoveries would reveal that the enlarged talons were positioned on the dinosaur’s fingers instead of its toes as on the dromaeosaurids. Most likely, Megaraptor and its kin were most closely related either to the tyrannosaurs or to the allosaurs.
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I made this map to go with one of my literary side-projects, which is in the alternate-history genre again. It's set in 200 BC, during the aftermath of the Second Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic. Having taken a nasty beating at the hands of their Roman nemeses, the Carthaginians have sent an expedition westward across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a safe haven from Roman aggression (as well as new riches to exploit). They have finally discovered a new world on the other side of the sea and established a new colony on its shores, but can they survive there? And how will they get along with the local inhabitants?
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These would be some of the dramatis personae for my latest side project, an alternate-history novella about ancient Carthaginians sailing across the Atlantic and reaching North America (which they name "Atlantis"). These first six characters would be the most important on the Carthaginian side (Part II will cover the major Native American characters).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
These would be some of the dramatis personae for my latest side project, an alternate-history novella about ancient Carthaginians sailing across the Atlantic and reaching North America (which they name "Atlantis"). These first six characters would be the most important on the Carthaginian side (Part II will cover the major Native American characters).
And here would be their Native American counterparts:
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Isceradin and Arishat, my two characters from ancient Carthage, are enjoying an intimate moment with one another by the sea. Isceradin, the man of the couple, can trace his ancestry to Carthage’s holdings on the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), whereas Arishat would be of indigenous North African heritage.
These two have become the leading man and lady of a forthcoming alternate-history novella of mine which is about the Carthaginians discovering the Americas (or “Atlantis” as they call them) in 200 BC. Together, they have a little daughter named Nikkal, although she is not shown here.
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It’s a breezy day in the desert of Late Cretaceous Mongolia around 75 million years ago, and this Velociraptor mongoliensis has perched on some high rocks to avoid the blowing sand clouds. Velociraptor’s name may be the most famous of the dromaeosaurids thanks to the Jurassic Park franchise, but these particular animals would have been much smaller than their film and novel counterparts, reaching the size of a modern turkey. They still could very well have been fierce predators though, as one specimen was found locked in combat with the ceratopsian Protoceratops when it died.
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It is early in the summer of 200 BC, and a Carthaginian expedition has finished crossing the mighty Atlantic Ocean and discovered an entire new continent, which they name Atlantis after the mythical sunken landmass. Among the colonists are our protagonists Isceradin, Arishat, and their little daughter Nikkal, all of whom are positioned closest to the front of the galley’s bow here.
This is an illustration I did for my novella "Carthage Atlantica", an alternate-history tale about ancient Carthaginians from North Africa settling in North America. The question remains, how will these colonists fare in a new world already populated by various indigenous peoples, and will their own leadership’s ambitions get the better of them?
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This is concept art for a creature known as a “blade-fang” that will appear in my upcoming novel "Women of the Plains", a tale about life for prehistoric humans in Africa circa 100,000 years ago. The species is technically a fictional invention of mine, but it would be descended from some of the saber-toothed cats that prowled Africa earlier in the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs. By the time the events of the novel takes place, the blade-fangs are diminishing in numbers, with most remaining individuals lurking in the mountains of the Great Rift Valley.
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It’s been a harsh winter on the plains of Pleistocene North America, and these saber-toothed Smilodon fatalis are desperate enough to take on a young bull woolly mammoth. Their numbers and fangs may not be enough to vanquish the hirsute pachyderm, or they may be if the cats are persistent.
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This is a doodle of Arishat, a Carthaginian female character from my alternate-history novella Carthage Atlantica, in a bad mood. Ever since I first drew her (without having yet given her a name at the time), she’s become one of those characters whom I love to draw again and again. Not least because she’s so gorgeous, if I do say so myself.
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66 million years ago, a mother Tyrannosaurus rex takes her young on a stroll along the southern shore of the Western Interior Seaway which covered much of North America during the Late Cretaceous Period. This was inspired by the first episode of the AppleTV documentary series Prehistoric Planet (a series which I personally found decent if a bit underwhelming).
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This would be a quick portrait I doodled of my Carthaginian character Arishat with a traditional African head-wrap around her braids. Head-wraps seem to be a common fashion article across Africa to this day, so it would make sense for ancient Carthaginian women to have worn them too.
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This would be a quick little portrait of an elderly man from modern Upper (southern) Egypt (the Arabic term for the region’s inhabitants is Sa’idi). I drew this using a photo reference I found online (here).
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This would be my latest depiction of Amanirenas (r. 40-10 BC), the Kentake (queen) of Kush who is best known for leading a military campaign against the Romans shortly after they annexed Egypt. Although less information has survived about her than many other historical Nile Valley queens, she has nonetheless become one of my favorites to draw. And yes, she was described as having only one working eye.
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This is a facial portrait of Phameas, a man from ancient Carthage who is a supporting character in my in-progress novella "Carthage Atlantica". A veteran of the Second Punic War, he is Arishat's older brother. Although he and Isceradin fought alongside each other in the war, Phameas is not crazy about someone of Iberian descent marrying his sister, so Isceradin will have to earn his trust and loyalty.
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Meritaten was an ancient Egyptian princess and queen who lived during the 14th century BC. The eldest of six daughters born to the “heretic” Pharaoh Akhenaten, Meritaten would participate in official ceremonies under her father and then become a Great Royal Wife (that is, queen consort) to Akhenaten’s successor Smenkhare. Some have also identified her with a female Pharaoh succeeding Smenkhare named Neferneferuaten, although other scholars identify that Pharaoh with her mother Nefertiti instead.
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This is a quick facial portrait of Malchus, a minor character from my in-progress alternate-history novella Carthage Atlantica. He is the grandson of the Carthaginian Sophet (magistrate) Absalon and has some experience fighting the Numidian tribes to Carthage's west.
In the second act of the book, Absalon invites his grandson over to the new colony on the coast of "Atlantis" (North America) to lead a military campaign against an indigenous empire called the Shaawanaki, and Malchus is more than happy to carry out his grandfather's wishes. But little do they realize what dangers their ambitions might lead them to...
By the way, while I was writing Malchus into the story, I pictured him as looking more than a bit like Donald Glover (or "Childish Gambino"), so that's how I tried to draw him here.
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Link to NSFW image here I doodled this jungle heroine as another homage to one of my favorite fantasy artists, Frank Frazetta. The character’s pose and (admittedly not too concealing) attire are based on his “Primitive Beauty” ink drawing.
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This is a piece of fanart I did of Roberta, the old female Tyrannosaurus rex from the Jurassic Park movies, in anticipation of the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion.
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Link to NSFW art here I was so fond of my earlier "Primitive Beauty" character that I drew her again, this time facing up against a hungry dinosaur based on the Baryonyx. Spinosaurids like Baryonyx would have normally gone after fish, but this one is either brave or desperate enough to challenge meatier prey, even if that prey can fight back with a spear!
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This is a character named Nyanja which I created after receiving some inspiration from one of the great fantasy artists, Frank Frazetta. She lives in a savage prehistoric world where dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts run wild, armed with an obsidian spear to hunt and fend off danger!
By the way, I actually did two versions of this artwork, one with a breast covering for her and one without (NSFW). I personally prefer the one without the covering, but unfortunately we live in a society where showing female nipples is taboo in certain venues.
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This is a quick fanart I did of the character Mel Medarda from Netflix’s animated series Arcane, which is set in the universe of the game League of Legends. Mel was easily my favorite character in the whole show, although I did feel a lot of sympathy for Vi as well. Mel’s costume, however, was a challenge to draw given its elaborate designs, so I ended up simplifying it a bit.
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Deep in the jungles of central Panjuru, the huntress Nyanja and her compatriots must defend their hunting ground from a rampaging deathjaw (Thanatotyrannus imperator)!
Panjuru is a prehistoric fantasy world I created as a setting for some of my illustrations (and possibly stories). In this scene, the character Nyanja would be the woman about to throw her spear at the beast.
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I wanted this random African maiden to be strutting with confidence, but I think she came out looking rather sad or nervous instead.
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Arishat, my character from ancient Carthage, is expressing disbelief with a bit of annoyance in this little doodle. I have to say, drawing your characters expressing random emotions can be a fun way to kill time when you’re bored.
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My ancient Carthaginian heroine Arishat is now drawn in an anime style!
Growing up, I was never that interested in Japanese anime, and still gravitate more towards Western animation for the most part. However, I have enjoyed a small sampling of anime such as Cowboy Bebop and Princess Mononoke, and I do respect how the Japanese are more willing to tackle mature themes in their animated products instead of focusing on children as Western cartoon studios tend to do.
Unfortunately, since most anime characters have small, pointy noises and no lip definition, it can present a challenge to draw an African character in the traditional anime style. That’s probably why a lot of the African and African-American characters in anime don’t look so distinctly African with regards to how their facial features are drawn. However, with my portrait of Arishat, I aimed to balance the conventions of anime with the need to show her African heritage. At least the eyes should look anime-ish here.
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This is a small, colored-pencil portrait of Allosaurus fragilis, which perhaps the most infamous carnivorous dinosaur of the Jurassic Period. This, along with its contemporaries Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus, is the predator that would have given Jurassic plant-eaters like Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Apatosaurus the hardest time.
Man, it’s been a long while since I last used colored pencils. When I was starting out on art, I would use them exclusively for colored pictures since I was not yet comfortable with digital art and drawing tablets. So turning to colored pencil here was a bit of an exercise in nostalgia for me.
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I added a simple desert background to my earlier depiction of an ancient Egyptian war chariot. Now they have a landscape to ride across!
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This is a sketchbook doodle I did of Wadjet, the ancient Egyptian cobra goddess who was the symbolic protector of Lower Egypt (that is, northern Egypt, or the area encompassing the Nile Delta). After I get back home from my current family trip on July 1st, I may do a digitally colored version of this.
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After having drawn the Egyptian cobra goddess Wadjet, it was only fair that I next draw the deity she is often paired with on Pharaohs' crowns, the vulture goddess Nekhbet. Just as Wadjet was the symbolic protector of Lower Egypt in the north, Nekhbet was the guardian of Upper Egypt to the south.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of Dreadnoughtus schrani, which was among the most massive sauropod dinosaurs ever to roam the earth. I think the tail came out a little too short here, but I had to cram as much of it onto the page as I could.
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Sometimes, you just gotta doodle another T. rex in your sketchbook.
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This warrior from the Great Plains of North America has somehow made it all the way to the Indian subcontinent and has paired up with one of the local maidens. Think of them as a special type of "Indian" couple!
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And here's a colored version of the above...
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These are my portrayals of the ancient Egyptian goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet. Wadjet, the cobra goddess, was the symbolic protector of Lower Egypt (that is, northern Egypt, or the area encompassing the Nile Delta) whereas the vulture goddess Nekhbet was the protector of Upper (southern) Egypt. Together, their heads frequently adorned the pharaohs' crowns.
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Several years ago, I developed this concept for a Victorian-era British colonel who had one of his arms replaced with a sophisticated metal prosthetic, making him a sort of steampunk cyborg. He was going to be a villain in one of my short stories set in Africa, and (as you might expect for a European imperialist bent on pillaging the Global South) he was not a nice guy. Unfortunately, I never got around to finishing the story, but I might get some mileage out of the character in the future nonetheless.
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Arishat, my character from ancient Carthage, displays her pearly whites in a happy smile.
In all honesty, I've been blocked on my "Carthage Atlantica" novella for a few weeks now, mainly because I am not 100% sure how to end it, but Arishat has been a fun character to doodle nonetheless.
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This young dancer from ancient Carthage is beating a tambourine-like frame drum as she shakes her stuff. Her design here would be almost entirely speculative, as surviving artistic representations of Carthaginian female dancers appear to be next to non-existent, but I based her skirt on those worn by ancient Egyptian dancers. Most of the jewelry she is wearing is silver mined from the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal).
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Out on the dry plains of Late Cretaceous South America, the large predatory dinosaur Meraxes gigas unleashes a loud territorial roar. Living between 97 and 93 million years ago, Meraxes would have been a smaller cousin of the earlier Giganotosaurus. As carcharodontosaurids, both would have had relatively short three-fingered forelimbs, but their main hunting weapons would have been their mouthfuls of bladelike teeth.
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I did this illustration as a tentative book cover for my in-progress novella "Carthage Atlantica". It's an alternate-history tale in which the ancient Carthaginians of North Africa sail to North America and get embroiled in a conflict between the Native American nations. I would say I am a little over 75% done with the novella's first draft as of now.
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This woman would be a female representative of the ancient North African people known as the Mauri, from whom the term “Moor” originates. They would have occupied the area of Morocco and northwestern Algeria during the days of the Roman Empire, and probably spoke a language related to those of modern Amazigh peoples. Her hairstyle is actually inspired by those of the Hamer people in modern Ethiopia (who share an Afroasiatic linguistic heritage with the Amazigh), but is nonetheless similar to those worn by the North African cavalrymen depicted on the Roman Trajan’s column.
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This is an archer from the kingdom of Kongo, a Central African civilization which emerged in the late fourteenth century AD and covered an area straddling northern Angola and the western Congo basin all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Archers would have constituted the largest proportion of Kongo’s military, although they also had heavy infantry who fought with swords and shields. Although the armies of Kongo fought the colonizing Portuguese on numerous occasions, they also had to contend with severe internal strife and civil wars after 1600 AD. In the end, the kingdom fell victim to the Portuguese, becoming a vassal state in 1862 and ultimately being abolished in 1914.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: This eagle-taming huntress represents an enigmatic prehistoric people known as “Population Y”, whose existence has been inferred from traces of ancestry they left behind in the genomes of modern Australasians and some Native American groups in South America. It’s possible that the Population Y people migrated to the Americas millennia before the primary ancestors of modern Native Americans (the latter arriving around 15,000 years ago), and human footprints in New Mexico dated to 23,000 years ago may record their presence.
And here's a 2022 update: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These lovers represent two human populations of prehistoric America before 11,000 years ago. The man comes from a population related to modern Native Americans, who would have entered the Americas from northeastern Asia around 16,000 years ago. The woman, on the other hand, represents the mysterious “Population Y” that appears to have left genetic traces of ancestry in both Australasian and South American peoples. It’s possible that Population Y people may have settled the Americas many thousands of years before the Native Americans proper, with the latter most likely absorbing the former.
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This Sherden mercenary in ancient Egypt is enjoying some quiet quality time with his native Egyptian wife along the banks of the Nile. The Sherden were one of several ethnic groups collectively referred to as the “Sea Peoples” who dispersed and raided across the Mediterranean basin towards the end of the Bronze Age in the late second millennium BC. Most likely, they originated somewhere in southern Europe.
At first, the Sherden and Egyptians didn’t get along that well, but some would later join the Egyptian army as mercenaries as well as the Pharaoh’s personal guard, being rewarded with gifts of land for their service. If they were like other foreigners assimilating into Egyptian society, it’s likely these Sherden would have married locals as depicted here.
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This is Drepanonychus venator, another fictional species of dinosaur from my fantasy world of Panjuru. These large and intelligent dromaeosaurids occupy a pack-hunting niche similar to our world's wolves or spotted hyenas, even possessing what might be considering a rudimentary language of clicks, screeches, and growls. They are among the most feared predators in all Panjuru.
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This courageous woman has a predatory leopard by the throat while readying to finish it off with her knife. In all honesty, I think the leopard came out a bit too stiff and human-like in its pose, but ladies fighting big cats is always a fun, classic theme.
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A digitally colored version of my warrior woman fighting a leopard. I moved the leopard's right hind leg up so that it would be clawing the woman's calves, which I consider an improvement over its position in the original drawing.
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Deep in the jungle of Late Cretaceous New Mexico, circa 91 million years ago, a Nothronychus mckinleyi munches on some low-hanging lianas. Nothronychus was a member of the Therizinosauridae, a family of feathered theropods that evolved a herbivorous diet and were characterized by long scythe-like claws on their fingers which they probably used to hack through vegetation. When fully grown, Nothronychus would have been around fourteen feet long and stood a bit higher than a human being from foot to head.
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Maia, a professional assassin hailing from the medieval Sudanese kingdom of Alodia, is aiming her arrow somewhere in feudal Japan.
Maia was the protagonist of a short story I wrote back in 2018 titled Arrows of Alodia, in which she had to contend with a client who really, really wanted to cover up their tracks…no matter the cost. Think of her as being like a ninja of African descent.
(If that sounds far-fetched to you, remember that the Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga actually had a samurai of African descent named Yasuke in his employ.)
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We should all know by now that Matoaka, the Powhatan “princess” who became immortalized in history as Pocahontas and even inspired a Disney animated film, would have been around twelve years old when she first met the British settlers of Jamestown in 1607 AD. But what if the Disney film had portrayed her that way instead of aging her up into a twenty-something woman?
(Twelve-year-old anatomical proportions are not easy to get right, believe me.)
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Time for another throwback! This is a goofy little artwork I did in 2019 of my ancient Egyptian character Itaweret in modern hip-hop getup. Back then, I was still writing her novel ("Priestess of the Lost Colony") and had yet to finalize the character's look. Nonetheless, I still love the combination of ancient Egyptian and hip-hop culture!
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This aristocratic lady from ancient Egypt is supposed to be giggling at something. I’ll leave it up to you to guess what could be amusing her.
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Meet Latonya Coleman, an archaeologist who specializes in retrieving stolen artifacts and returning them to their places of origin. They know her as the “Tomb Savior”.
Of course, this character was heavily inspired by Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider games, but I decided that she would be sort of an antithesis to Croft. I doubt the two ladies would get along that well if they were to meet one another.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I did this illustration to go along with a short story I wrote starring my archaeologist character Latonya Coleman. While on her way to an ancient city in the Ivory Coast of West Africa to return a stolen idol, Latonya gets attacked by a clan of spotted hyenas and must fend them off with her dual pistols. But wild animals are not the only threat awaiting her in the city…
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This is a warrior representing a grouping of Germanic peoples known as the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded Great Britain from the area of northern Germany and Denmark beginning in the 400s AD, after the Western Roman Empire had pulled out of the province. Together, the disparate kingdoms they formed in the area would become the country known as England today, with their language evolving into modern English. Originally, the Anglo-Saxons would have practiced a religion related to that of the Norse and other Germanic cultures, but they would convert to Christianity beginning in the late sixth century.
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This Allosaurus is in the process of turning around while running. Allosaurus is estimated to have been able to run between 19 and 34 miles per hour, which is not bad for a three-ton dinosaur.
Posted by TRPL_DRKNSS (Member # 23628) on :
Dope!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by TRPL_DRKNSS: Dope!
Thanks, fellow artist!
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While on a mission to return a stolen Maya artifact to its original location, the archaeologist Latonya Coleman has to hide from a Tyrannosaurus rex on the prowl. Not even her dual pistols and martial arts skills would be enough to bring down the ten-ton beast…or so she thinks.
There’s actually another story behind this illustration, although I haven’t written it all down yet. The ruined city you see is situated in the Late Cretaceous Period, with its architects being Maya colonists who went through a natural “time portal” hidden in the Guatemala highlands and ultimately got wiped out by a virulent Mesozoic disease. Centuries later, an artifact from the city fell into the hands of a creationist ministry in America who wanted to use its depictions of dinosaurs to discredit the scientific understanding that humans evolved millions of years after non-avian dinosaurs died out.
Not only will Latonya have to brave the dinosaurs and other wildlife of the Late Cretaceous in order to return the artifact to its rightful place, but the ministry has sent goons after her to retake it for them…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Meet Scott Jones, who is a character I created to be a boyfriend for my archaeologist heroine Latonya Coleman. He shares her passion for archaeology, but he's more comfortable studying artifacts back at university than venturing into the field like her. Nonetheless, he has a knack for linguistics and deciphering ancient texts.
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This is a quick doodle of a Native American woman from the Great Plains wearing a "war bonnet" representing the respect she has earned in her community. In most of the historically documented cultures which had war bonnets, it was usually the men who wore them, but hey, Native American cultures must have undergone a lot of change since their ancestors entered the Americas around 15,000 years ago. Besides, given how many female models of European descent have posed wearing war bonnets in the past, I thought it only fair that Native women be depicted wearing them too.
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Sketchbook doodle of the Late Cretaceous dromaeosaurid Dineobellator sitting on an ancient carved pillar. The artwork on the pillar was inspired by that of the pre-Columbian Maya. Imagine if the Maya found a hidden portal to the Late Cretaceous and established a settlement somewhere on the other side...
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The archaeologist Latonya Coleman is giving her colleague and boyfriend Scott Jones an affectionate kiss. Scott may not have the same appetite for dangerous adventure as his girlfriend, but they do share a passion for studying the ancient past.
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I wanted to try out a set of colored pencils I recently got for under $5 on an earlier pencil sketch of my archaeologist character Latonya Coleman. Unfortunately, the brown pencils I used for her skin tone didn't make her look dark enough, so I had to go over her skin again with a different brand of pencil (Prismacolor).
Posted by TRPL_DRKNSS (Member # 23628) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: The archaeologist Latonya Coleman is giving her colleague and boyfriend Scott Jones an affectionate kiss. Scott may not have the same appetite for dangerous adventure as his girlfriend, but they do share a passion for studying the ancient past.
is she holding him hostage? Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by TRPL_DRKNSS:
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: The archaeologist Latonya Coleman is giving her colleague and boyfriend Scott Jones an affectionate kiss. Scott may not have the same appetite for dangerous adventure as his girlfriend, but they do share a passion for studying the ancient past.
is she holding him hostage?
Sorry, but no. She's supposed to be kissing him.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Meet Karen Cunningham, an antagonist I created for a short story that stars my archaeologist heroine Latonya Coleman. A wealthy English socialite and heiress to the fortune of her family’s corporate empire, Karen has a fondness for “collecting” ancient artifacts, which has put her at odds with Latonya’s mission to return those artifacts to the tombs and temples where they belong. Furthermore, Karen also resents Latonya for winning the heart of Scott Jones, whom Karen hoped to woo in order to exploit his archaeological knowledge for her own ends. Think of Karen as an old nemesis for Latonya.
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After years of going after weak and vulnerable human beings with his machete, Jason Voorhees decided to visit South Africa in search of bigger, tougher game, such as this rogue lion. Who will emerge victorious from this confrontation between human and leonine serial killers?
I got the idea for this after seeing the movie Beast, which pits Idris Elba against a rogue lion who has taken to murdering human beings after poachers wiped out its pride. I thought to myself, “That lion sure is a lot like a human serial killer, so how would it fare against any of the various serial-killer characters from the horror movie genre”?
My money’s on the lion, personally.
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This unfortunate Kritosaurus navajovius is about to have a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex crunching down on its neck!
Most of the time, when you see a T. rex going after hadrosaurs in paleoart, the prey is Edmontosaurus. I wanted to shake things up a bit by having the unlucky hadrosaur be Kritosaurus, from the southern half of T. rex’s range, instead.
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Someone I know from Facebook had me speak to a high school class on Afrofuturism he teaches via Zoom today. It gave me an opportunity to share my artwork and talk about my written works to an interested audience. I don't think he has posted the whole conversation online even though he recorded it, but here's a TikTok where he summarizes what I said in his own words:
I remember seeing that piece in my childhood! Never knew he was the artist behind it.
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This machete-armed warrior represents a culture of ancient West Africa known as the Nok, which thrived in the area of central Nigeria between 1500 BC and 500 AD. A culture characterized by agriculture, iron-working, and settlements of wattle-and-daub houses, they are best known for the abundance of terracotta sculptures they have left behind, giving us an idea of their attire and weaponry. I have to say, they do seem to have had the funkiest hairstyles!
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Nyanja, my prehistoric-fantasy huntress heroine, charges at you with her dinosaur-fang knife drawn for the kill!
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Armed with her knife of saurian ivory, the huntress Nyanja won’t let herself fall prey to these vicious Drepanonychus!
(Drepanonychus is not a real species of dinosaur, by the way, but rather a fictional species I created for the fantasy setting Nyanja inhabits.)
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Meet Aspidonotus clavocaudus, a fictional species of stegosaurid from my fantasy setting of Panjuru. Commonly addressed as “shield-backs” in reference to the alternating rows of plates on their backs, these massive gregarious herbivores are more commonly seen in Panjuru’s savanna regions, grazing on grass, ferns, and other low-level plant life. Both their thagomizers (tail spikes) and shoulder-spikes protect them from the numerous predators, saurian and human alike, on the hot and open plains.
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This Natufian woman from around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago appears to be deep in thought as she gazes upon the landscape that will become the area encompassing modern Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. A culture of hunter-gatherers who settled in permanent villages, the Natufians are believed to be the immediate precursors to some of the earliest Neolithic farmers in the Fertile Crescent.
If you're wondering why my Natufian woman here looks "African", physical anthropologists examining the Natufians' skeletal remains have reported a vague resemblance to those of various African peoples. Furthermore, archaeologists such as Ofer Bar-Yosef have suggested their lithic technology was influenced by that of earlier Egyptian peoples known as the Mushabians.
More recently, Natufian genomes from the site of El Wad in Israel appear to show that they did have some ancestry (around 27%) from northern Africa, which the researchers called "Ancestral North African" (or ANA for short). Another, earlier study found that an even larger proportion of their ancestry (amounting to around 44%) came from a population called "Basal Eurasian", which could also be Northeast African due to lacking almost any of the admixture from Neanderthals seen in truly Eurasian peoples.
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It's a hot summer day, so this princess is going skinny-dipping in her royal swimming pool to cool off. Thankfully for us spectators, she's from a time and place where swimming suits have yet to become fashionable. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In ancient Egypt, it was customary to line the eyes with black kohl to reduce glare from the bright African sun, similar to how modern football players paint black stripes under their eyes. It was also believed to have medicinal properties protecting the eyes from disease, as well as malignant spirits.
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Qianzhousaurus sinesis was a tyrannosaurid dinosaur of the alioramin tribe that hunted in the humid, semitropical forests of China during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 67 and 66 million years ago. Nicknamed “Pinoccho Rex” on account of its narrow snout, it would have been a medium-sized predator around twenty feet in length with a mass nearing 1,700 lbs.
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This is a simple profile view of Itaweret, an ancient Egyptian (or Kemetian) priestess of the goddess Mut who is the protagonist of my novel "Priestess of the Lost Colony". It feels like it's been a while since I last drew her.
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Time for another throwback...
This couple represents the culture known as the Iberomaurusian, an Upper Paleolithic culture that occupied the northwest coast of Africa between 25,000 and 11,000 years ago. The name “Iberomaurusian” came about because it was once believed the culture extended all the way into Europe’s Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), but this has since been discounted. After their heyday, the Iberomaurusians would be superseded in the northwest African region by the later Capsian culture.
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Check out this showcase I created of my paleoanthropological art on YouTube!
If the mythological concept of the centaur had made its way across the Mediterranean from Greece into Egypt, what might the Egyptian variation look like? Maybe something like this, or so I’d like to imagine.
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Living around 40,000 years ago, this woman’s ancestry would be a mix between two hominin species, the European Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) on the one hand and the Aurignacian modern humans (Homo sapiens) coming in from Africa on the other. To this day, between one to four percent of modern human ancestry outside of Africa appears to come from admixture with Neanderthals.
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This would be my interpretation of the protagonist from Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairy tale “The Little Mermaid”. Her story is a rather tragic one, in which she surrenders her mermaid identity in pursuit of a human prince, only for things to not turn out so well for her.
I got the inspiration to draw this after a teaser trailer for Disney’s “live-action” remake of their animated adaptation came out, which caused quite a commotion on the Internet since they cast an African-American actress to play the mermaid Ariel (there are in fact West African traditions of mermaid-like creatures called Mami Wata). In all honesty, I never cared for the first Disney adaptation of Andersen’s story, nor do I have a high opinion of their recent live-action remakes in general, so I don’t have a high expectation of how the new movie will come out. I do find the Andersen original to be tragic in a bittersweet way though.
By the way, the oysters attached to the mermaid’s tail here are a detail lifted from the original fairy tale.
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This would be a Haradrim warrior riding a giant elephant known as a Mumak in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth mythos, the setting of his famous Lord of the Rings novel series. The people called Haradrim are basically the stand-ins for African people in Tolkien’s world, occupying the region to Middle Earth’s south. Unfortunately, as might be expected for a story authored by a White Englishman back in the 1950s, the Haradrim (as well as the Asian-based people of Rhun to the east) were mostly fighting on behalf of the bad guys against the heroic European stand-ins. The racist implications of that setup should be obvious to any modern observer.
By the way, my portrayal of the Mumak was inspired in part by the prehistoric Palaeoloxodon namadicus, a cousin of the modern African forest elephant which may have been the biggest elephant species known to exist.
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This would be an agojie, or female soldier, from the West African kingdom of Dahomey, which occupied the area of modern Benin between 1600 and 1904 AD. Recognized in their time for their discipline and ferocity in battle, the so-called “Dahomey Amazons” have become famous as real-life manifestations of the “warrior woman” trope, thus making them a sort of feminist symbol.
Alas, their legacy had many negative aspects as well, for a major proportion of their activities consisted of raiding other kingdoms in the region to procure captives and sell them to European slavers. It goes to show you how cruel and complicated history can be, even if it can also be inspirational.
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A band of Viking raiders, hungry for plunder as always, has ventured all the way to southern Africa to cause trouble. It’s up to these valiant Zulu defenders to keep the northern marauders at bay!
(In real history, of course, what we know as the Zulu kingdom emerged in the 19th century AD, well after the end of the Viking age. However, Nguni-speaking peoples ancestral to the Zulu would have settled in what is now South Africa around the first century AD, so they would have been present in the region by the time the Vikings came around. And, you have to admit, “Vikings versus Zulu” makes for a cool title.)
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In the forests of Late Cretaceous Australia, circa 95 million years ago, the predatory Australovenator wintonensis is on the hunt. A member of the megaraptorid family of theropod dinosaurs, Australovenator would have grown up to twenty feet long and weighed over a thousand pounds when fully grown.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of a Zulu warrior about to bring the killing blow down to his Viking adversary. The foreshortening on the fallen Viking here was ridiculously difficult to get right. Might color this in later...
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And now it's colored! Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
"I lay paralyzed in homicidal rage, the anger's driving me insane..."
This was inspired by the Machine Head song "Slaughter the Martyr", from their recent album "Of Kingdom and Crown". The song's chorus, quoted above, somehow made me think of a Tyrannosaurus rex with the blood of its prey on its jaws. Music has a way of putting pictures in my mind like that sometimes.
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This attractive young lady would be a sangoma, a professional healer and priestess among the Zulu and related ethnic groups of South Africa. A major responsibility of the sangoma is to communicate with and appease the souls of ancestors in the spirit world, since Zulu belief holds that these ancestors can cause illness to people who displease them. Traditionally, sangomas were more often than not women, but in theory anyone could become a sangoma if they received a “calling” from the spirit world.
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After a bitter and bloody conflict, the Vikings and the Zulu are finally willing to put their grievances aside and make peace. And what better way to make peace with your enemy than introducing him to your sister?
(Yes, I know the handshake shown here is a bit awkward since the Viking is using his left hand to shake the Zulu’s right, but then again, you’d do the same if your right arm was busy holding onto your newly acquired Zulu girlfriend).
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66 million years ago in the semitropical forests of North America, Tyrannosaurus rex is stalking some Edmontosaurus annectens while under the cover of the trees. It won’t be long before the mighty apex predator bursts out into the clearing and delivers a bone-crushing bite to its prey.
By the way, the small mammal climbing on the vine to the upper right of the composition would be one of the immediate ancestors of Purgatorius mckeeveri, an early cousin of modern primates.
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This is a Norse berserker, one of a legendary class of warriors said to wear bear or wolf skins while going into a trance-like homicidal rage on the battlefield. Devout followers of the warrior god Odin, these elite fighters would have served as chieftains’ guards as well as shock troops in battle, although they could be difficult to control once they went, well, berserk. Some scholars suggest they might have consumed mind-altering substances to enhance their fanatical fury.
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Cleopatra VII, Queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, is chillin’ while gazing out to the Mediterranean Sea to the north of her capital. This time, I wanted to try out drawing a woman’s face at a somewhat different angle from usual.
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This sketchbook doodle of an ancient Carthaginian war elephant is little more than 5x5 inches in dimension. It was a quick little exercise in drawing subjects within a smaller area. The end result might not have as much detail as my usual, but I still think it came out rather well.
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This is my colorization of a sarcophagus from ancient Carthage that belonged to a woman who appears to have served as some sort of priestess, possibly to the (originally Egyptian) goddess Isis. The original is from the Carthage National Museum in Tunisia.
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This priestess from ancient Carthage in North Africa is officiating a ritual to honor the goddess Tanit, represented by the crescent moon hovering overhead in the night sky. In Carthaginian mythology, Tanit was one of the most important deities, overseeing fertility. To this day, modern Tunisians may invoke a similar entity called “Omek Tannou” to summon rain during droughts.
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Isis (or Auset), the ancient Egyptian goddess who was the spouse of Osiris and mother of Horus, spreads her divine wings out as a protective gesture. Isis is one of several goddesses in Egyptian mythology sometimes portrayed with avian wings, with others including her sister Nephthys and the goddess of justice and truth known as Ma’at.
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Two of the most ferocious beasts of the antediluvian age, the mighty Megalosaurus and the terrifying Tyrannosaurus, confront one another in a bout of territorial antagonism!
In reality, of course, Megalosaurus lived around a hundred million years before T. rex, but this is supposed to be a tribute to old outdated reconstructions of dinosaurs (hence the tyrannosaur’s upright posture and the megalosaur being a quadruped).
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Isis spreading her wings, now with a background!
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This is my artistic depiction of the biblical David, a Hebrew king of ancient Israel who is famous for slaying the Philistine warrior Goliath with a sling-thrown stone. I based his pose here on the famous sculpture by Michelangelo, but his tunic is inspired by those worn by Palestinian immigrants illustrated on the wall of an ancient Egyptian tomb at the site of Beni Hasan. The garment he’s wearing on his head is a keffiyeh like those worn by modern Palestinian people.
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This is my take on the biblical character of Esther (or Hadassah), the namesake protagonist of the Old Testament’s Book of Esther. A woman of Hebrew heritage living in Achaeamenid Persia during the fifth century BC, she married the Persian Shah Ahasuerus (possibly Xerxes I) and then revealed to him his viceroy Haman’s plot to have Persia’s Hebrew population wiped out after her guardian Mordecai refused to bow before him (earlier, she also notified the Shah of a separate plot to assassinate him). Her story forms the basis of the Jewish holiday of Purim.
I will admit that my take on Esther looks almost African here, but given that the Hebrew homeland is situated right next door to Africa, a significant degree of African genetic and cultural influence would make sense for her.
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This is my portrait of Moremi Ajasora, a legendary Ayaba (Queen) of the Yoruba kingdom of Ife in what is now southwestern Nigeria. Her husband, Oranmiyan, would have been the second king in Ife’s history. When an enemy people called the Ugbo besieged Ife, Moremi offered herself as a captive to them. Her time among the Ugbo, combined with the aid of the spirit of the Esmirin River, allowed her to learn how to defeat their armies, which she relayed to her own people after escaping back to Ife.
Unfortunately, in exchange for the help the river spirit had given her earlier, Moremi had to sacrifice her only son, Oluorogbo. To console her for her loss, the people of Ife offered to be her eternal children, honoring her legacy more than any other woman in Yoruba history. A statue erected to her in 2017 is now the tallest sculpture in all Nigeria.
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Seventy million years ago in South America, during the Late Cretaceous Period, an azdarchid pterosaur soars over a lake where a herd of sauropod dinosaurs known as Dreadnoughtus is stopping by to drink and cool off. Further in the background rises a range of colossal rock formations.
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This would be a simple doodle of a leopard from my sketchbook because, hey, I like leopards.
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This maiden from ancient Numidia (a region in northwestern Africa located in what is now the countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) has her arms crossed in what appears to be deep thought. I drew this one using photo reference for the pose, although the subject in the original photo was a modern African-descended woman.
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Today, I'd like to announce that I have completed the first draft of my alternate-history novella Carthage Atlantica, a tale about ancient Carthaginians crossing the Atlantic and settling on the coast of North America in 200 BC. It still needs some editing to polish it, after which it'll be ready to share with the world!
In the meantime, let me post these concept artworks for the main characters again:
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This would be my second cover design for my alternate history novella "Carthage Atlantica". This one shows hostile Native American warriors attacking a Carthaginian war elephant in the forests of eastern North America (the Natives' attire is based on those worn by warriors of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture).
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This is my quick little doodle of a gorilla playing an accordion. Because why not?
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This is Arishat, an ancient Carthaginian woman who is a supporting character from my alternate history novella “Carthage Atlantica”, selling textiles she has made on her loom at home. After spending a weekend editing the completed draft of the novella, I simply wanted to draw her again, but this time showing how she supplements her family’s income.
UPDATE: An alternate version with a sandy-colored background, since someone on Facebook told me the purplish background looked too saturated:
Ibn Battuta (1304-1369 AD) was a Moroccan explorer and scholar who was among the most well-traveled men recorded in the annals of the Middle Ages. Over the course of his life, his adventures, which he recorded in his travelogue The Rihla, took him as far afield as Mali in West Africa, the Swahili town of Kilwa on the coast of Tanzania to the south, and the Indies and even China to the east. He is thought to have traveled more miles than any other explorer in the pre-modern era, with the Chinese sailor Zheng He coming up in second place and the Italian Marco Polo at third.
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Yusuf ibn Tashufin (1061-1106 AD) was a ruler of the Muslim Almoravid Empire, which he and his cousin Abu Bakr spread from the Senegal River in West Africa all the way up to what are now Morocco and Algeria. Under Yusuf's leadership, the Almoravids even crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and took control of Muslim Spain, and Yusuf even defeated the Christian king Alfonso VI of Castile at the battle of Sagrajas in 1086 AD. Pictured alongside him here is his wife and queen Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyah, with whom he would have shared power as if she were a co-ruler. They are known to have produced at least three sons together, one of whom was Yusuf's successor Ali ibn Yusuf.
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This is my concept for a zebra-riding skirmisher who throws javelins at the enemy to harry them on the battlefield.
If the zebras of Africa lent themselves more readily to taming and domestication, then African warriors would have had a blast riding them into battle. As it happened, many African nations north of the equator did make use of horses for cavalry after the Palestinian Hyksos introduced them in the seventeenth century BC, but the animals never made it past the continents tsetse fly belt due to a lack of adaptation to sleeping sickness. However, people in eastern Africa did domesticate one native equine species, the African wild ass, which would become the modern donkey.
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It is 193 million years ago in the Early Jurassic Period, and the predatory dinosaur Dilophosaurus wetherilli is chasing the basal sauropodomorph Sarahsaurus aurifontanalis across the arid plains of southwestern North America. Although Dilophosaurus is often portrayed in popular culture as being able to spit venom, there is no evidence that it could do so, and it probably didn’t need that ability anyway as the apex predator in its habitat.
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This is a map I drew of the ancient Nile Valley in northeastern Africa, including the civilizations of ancient Kemet (Egypt), Wawat, and Kush. Included are tiny drawings of architecture as well as the various ethnic groups inhabiting the region.
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13,000 years ago in North America, an early Native American hunter must protect himself from an attacking saber-toothed Smilodon fatalis. Saber-toothed cats like Smilodon are often portrayed preying on “cavemen” in popular culture, yet I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of serious paleoart pitting them against the ancestors of Native Americans. This scene should do something to rectify that strange paucity.
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To get myself out of a small art block, I did this quick depiction of an ancient Egyptian soldier thrusting his spear while holding out his cowhide-covered shield for protection. Sometimes simpler pieces like this can be useful for breaking out of those creative blocks.
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This warrior is practicing maneuvers with her spear out on the grassy plains. Even the most proficient fighters must keep their skills sharp with regular practice.
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This is a drawing of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertari (d. 1255 BC) which I colored using my mom’s colored pencil set. It came out a little messy, as do a lot of my artworks done with non-digital media, but that messiness can sometimes be liberating compared with the precision of digital works.
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The priest and royal chancellor Imhotep, perhaps ancient Egypt’s most famous architect, stands before what may be his magnum opus, the funerary complex he is thought to have designed for the Pharaoh Djoser (2686-2648 BC). Located at the site of Saqqara almost twenty miles south of modern Cairo, the complex’s stepped pyramid would have been the very first of Egypt’s world-renown pyramid-tombs.
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This is a head portrait of Tarbosaurus bataar, a very close yet smaller cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex that would have roamed northeastern Asia around 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. I wanted the simple background to have a texture like that of autumn leaves, as Tarbosaurus is thought to have hunted in a relatively temperate (by Mesozoic standards) forest environment.
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This is a still-life drawing I did of a little metal statuette my mom once gave me, claiming it looked like the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. To me, the sculpture appears much more likely to have been inspired by those of “sub-Saharan” Africa (not my favorite term, I admit), but I do see a resemblance between its head and that of Nefertiti.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of a forager woman from the Natufian culture of prehistoric western Asia between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago. The tool she is carrying in her right hand is a sickle edged with sharp little stone blades which she uses to harvest wild grasses.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of a forager woman from the Natufian culture of prehistoric western Asia between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago. The tool she is carrying in her right hand is a sickle edged with sharp little stone blades which she uses to harvest wild grasses.
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I did this entire drawing of a warrior woman fighting a dragon in my sketchbook while waiting for my flight at the airport. It wasn't the most comfortable environment for drawing, but I am proud of how the scene turned out regardless.
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This is my concept for a character who had some alligator DNA forcibly injected into her genome at the behest of some nefarious billionaire, thereby imparting onto her some of the physical traits and abilities of an alligator. She may look menacing with her sharp teeth and reptilian eyes, but I imagine her to be more of a heroine than villain, setting out to prevent more young women from falling prey to the same fate she suffered.
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This is my drawing of the Egyptian goddess Seshat, who presided over the written word and knowledge. She was commonly represented wearing a leopard-skin dress as well as a seven-pointed star and crescent over her head while holding a reed pen and a notched palm leaf rib. Her husband was the scribal god Thoth or Djehuti.
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The forelimbs of Tyrannosaurus rex might have been too short to scratch itself in most places, but that’s when the palm trees in its habitat would have come in handy instead. Perfect for cleansing your hide of noxious pests!
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This is a drawing I did of a generic Arab soldier from one of the medieval Islamic caliphates, such as the Fatimids, Abbasids, or Ayyubids. He is wearing a sort of surcoat over a chainmail shirt and carries a scimitar as his weapon.
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In the wetlands of Cretaceous Africa around 95 million years ago, this Spinosaurus aegyptiacus has caught itself a small crocodylomorph for its lunch. Paleontologists have gone back and forth on exactly how the Spinosaurus would have traveled through its watery habitat, but I don’t think anyone can deny that the dinosaur had some affinity for aquatic surroundings (and prey).
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Deep in the jungles along the Black Coast during an age undreamed of, Conan the Cimmerian adventurer must test his might (and his steel) against the resident apex predator!
As a matter of fact, in Robert E. Howard’s story “Red Nails”, Conan did encounter a “dragon” similar to a dinosaur which had been resurrected via sorcery from fossilized bones. He also met a saber-toothed cat in “Beyond the Black River”. So there is some precedent in Howard’s canon for his iconic barbarian confronting prehistoric lifeforms.
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Deep in the rainforests of central Panjuru, the huntress Nyanja is trekking through the understory with her husband Bombo. Their obsidian-tipped spears, dinosaur-fang knives, and survival skills are what will protect them against the jungle’s myriad dangers.
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I’m just sick of seeing AI-generated shit all over the artistic regions of the Internet, and the fact that these algorithms work by taking bits and pieces of human-made artwork without the artists’ permission makes it even worse. So I am joining the movement to denounce it. In my opinion, art sites like DeviantArt and ArtStation shouldn’t even allow this stuff on their platforms (I see Newgrounds already forbids it). They should be for art made with actual thought and skill by actual human artists.
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This would be the profile of an ancient Egyptian queen (not any particular historical personage) that emulates the distinctive Egyptian art style. I have to say it was a fun little exercise to dabble in.
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Somewhere in a remote corner of the ocean, this relict mosasaur is curious about a pirate ship that is sailing over its territory. Those buccaneers should prepare for trouble!
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Gazing upon the grassy plains and the mountains beyond, this vagabond warrior is ready to embark on a great adventure!
For her breast covering and skirt, I wanted a color palette evocative of the holiday of Kwanzaa (namely green, red, and black). Happy Kwanzaa to those that celebrate it!
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DOPE!
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Kwanzaa furaha
The color order is Red Black and Green as in the famous Tricolor Flag by the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
Learn about the Tricolors https://youtu.be/21osFqhfBsI The Universal Æthiopian Anthem written by Rabbi Arnold Josiah Ford zs"l 20th century founder of Torah true siddur praying Jews of former slave ancestry in the Americas.
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This Negrito huntress, armed with both her bow and arrow and her trusty tiger companion, is more than ready to take on the dangers of the rainforest in prehistoric Southeast Asia!
As it happens, the Semang Negrito people indigenous to Malaysia believe that the shamans among them have the ability to transform into tigers to protect their people from wild tiger attacks.
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This is my drawing of one of the Danaides, the fifty daughters of an African king named Danaus in Greek mythology.
Originally, the plan was for these women to all marry the fifty sons of Danaus’s brother, the Egyptian ruler Aegyptus, but Danaus did not want these weddings to proceed and so fled with them to the Greek city-state of Argos, only for Aegyptus and his sons to follow. Danaus then ordered his daughters to murder their husbands in their sleep on their wedding night, and they all did so except for one woman named Hypermnestra (who did so because her husband Lynceus respected her desire to remain a virgin). As punishment for their crimes, the other Danaides were condemned to pour water into a perforated bathtub for eternity in the underworld.
As for Hypermnestra, on the other hand, she and her husband founded a whole dynasty of rulers in Argos called the Danaid dynasty. The story of the Danaides would also inspire the play “The Suppliants” by Aeschylus.
I referenced this Danaid’s woman pose from an old painting by John William Waterhouse in which the Danaides are pouring water into the tub in the Greek underworld.
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This is my interpretation of Dolores, a Malian mage who is a playable character in the fighting game The King of Fighters XV. I have to say her design is sexy in a way you don't see as often in video games nowadays, but I did feel that her model's facial features did not look distinctly West African enough and sought to rectify that with my own depiction.
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In the rainforests of Central Africa, our heroine has come under attack by a troop of hungry chimpanzees!
Despite their cute and playful image, chimps are known to hunt down and consume other primates, including abducted human infants. That said, many human cultures in Central Africa do hunt chimps for food in turn, and it’s likely that this practice is what spread the HIV virus that causes AIDS from chimps to us. That should go to show you that you shouldn’t mess too much with our closest living relatives.
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Ezana (c. 320s-360 AD) was an emperor of Aksum, an empire centered on what is now modern Ethiopia and Eritrea that, at the peak of its power, stretched from northern Sudan to the west and southern Arabia to the east. Under the influence of his enslaved Syrian teacher Frumentius, Ezana was the first Ethiopian ruler to convert to Christianity. He may have also conquered the kingdom of Kush in 350 AD, as historians have deduced from Ge’ez inscriptions on a stela found at the Kushite capital of Meroe, although an alternate interpretation is that Ezana was simply helping the Kushites suppress a revolt by the Nuba people. To this day, both the Catholic Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church reveres Ezana as a saint, honoring him with days of feasting on the 1st and 27th of October.
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Just wanted to share a shirt with my artwork on it that I ordered from myself on Redbubble!
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This is my depiction of Othello, the titular protagonist of one of William Shakespeare’s famous plays. Othello is a general of North African “Moorish” heritage who fights on behalf of the Italian city-state of Venice, earning himself both accolades for his military success as well as the hand of a Venetian senator’s daughter whom he has won over with tales of his adventure. Unfortunately, their story ends on a tragic note, in large part due to the machinations of Othello’s resentful and vindictive ensign.
I was at first unsure how to dress Othello here. I felt that a strictly European or Islamic attire would be boring, so I chose to combine the two cultures instead, with a little touch of additional inspiration from indigenous African cultures.
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This is a portrait of the Jurassic predatory theropod Allosaurus which I made in the program Clip Studio Paint, attempting a more “painterly” style without my usual black outlines.
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These are a man and woman representing the Sabaeans, a civilization that developed in the area of Yemen in southern Arabia around 790 BC and lasted until 275 AD. They were not Arabic-speakers but rather speakers of a South Semitic language related to some spoken in the modern Horn of Africa (e.g. Ethiopian Ge’ez, Tigrinya, and Amharic) as well as a handful of minority languages persisting in Yemen, Oman, and Socotra.
The Sabaean civilization may have been the “Sheba” mentioned in the Bible and was also a major cultural influence on the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, with the Sabaean written alphabet evolving into the modern Ge’ez one. Sabaean religion appears to have been polytheistic, but some of their practices, for example pilgrimages to a religious site called the Kaaba, would make their way into Islamic sharia law.
I based both the man and woman’s appearance on a couple of ancient Sabaean sculptures. The one I used for the male figure had little, spike-like Afro “twists” and an ankle-length, dhoti-like loincloth whereas the one for the woman had a calf-length skirt and braided hair that ended in a long plait at the back. Both sculptures’ hairstyles suggested to me an African influence that would be consistent with ongoing intercourse between Africa and southern Arabia that, in all probability, would have gone back to the initial arrival of modern humans into the latter region from Africa between 70-50,000 years ago.
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This is my portrait of the “dark-skinned and comely” heroine of the Biblical erotic poem titled the Song of Songs, or alternately the Song of Solomon (since its authorship is commonly, but perhaps erroneously, attributed to King Solomon). Although never named, she is addressed as a “maid of Shulem” in one verse, which may refer to an origin either in the Israelite capital of Jerusalem or a village named Shunem or Shulem.
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I gave my earlier "chillin'" Cleopatra's shirt a darker shade of blue to make her stand out more from my depiction of Hypatia of Alexandria. Plus, I think darker blue is more Egyptian-esque than lighter blue.
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This is my depiction of an Aboriginal Australian huntress living sometime long before the European invasions of the 19th century. I admit that there’s a lot of romantic fantasy going into this design, but to make it come across less like an ignorant stereotype, I did do some quick homework on what Aboriginal Australian clothing would have looked like in pre-invasion times. One thing I learned is that some Aboriginal cultures liked to draw or inscribe designs like lozenges or cross-hatching into their loincloths, which inspired the patterns on the one my heroine is wearing here.
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Cleopatra and Amanirenas, two contemporaneous queens of the Nile, printed on matte brochure paper! I love how Cleo came out, but I worry that Amani may have come out a bit too dark (even though she is intended to be very dark-skinned, like South Sudanese people today). The weird thing about printing digital artworks is that they sometimes don't come out as bright as they appear on your computer screen.
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Proceratosaurus bradleyi was a small theropod dinosaur that hunted in Europe around 166 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic Period. Once thought to have been an ancestor to the larger horned predator Ceratosaurus due to fragments of a crest being found on its head, Proceratosaurus is now thought to have been more closely related to theropods of the coelurosaur lineage like Yutyrannus and Guanlong.
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This is my portrait of the Ptolemaic Egyptian princess Arsinoe IV (b. 68-63 BC), who was the youngest daughter of Ptolemy XII and a sister to Cleopatra VII (the famous Cleopatra). After their father’s death, a secession dispute broke out between Arsinoe, Cleopatra, and their brother Ptolemy XIII, with the Roman statesman Julius Caesar entering the conflict as he became Cleopatra’s lover. After the conflict turned bloody and then ended with Cleopatra gaining the Ptolemaic throne, Arsinoe found sanctuary at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus (located in what is now Turkey), only for her big sister and Mark Antony to have her executed. Ancient power politics could often be cutthroat like that!
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Did you know that there were Viking warriors who fought on behalf of the Roman Empire? Well…almost. The western half of what we think of as the Roman Empire had collapsed nearly three centuries before the Viking Age got going, but the eastern half, known to historians as the Byzantine Empire, lived on well into the Middle Ages, with the capital being the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey). And these “Byzantine” Romans did indeed make use of Viking mercenaries whose forerunners had settled in the area of northeastern Europe.
It was these Vikings, along with some Anglo-Saxons from England, who made up what became the Varangian Guard, a corps of bodyguards for the Byzantine emperor. Their ferocity in battle also made them handy as elite soldiers in the Byzantine army, fighting with axes like the one pictured here.
If you’re wondering whether this Varangian guardsman’s facial paint is historically accurate, in all honesty, I don’t know for sure. I just think blue war paint looks cool on northern European warriors.
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Reposting something I did back in 2019, albeit with a few minor touch-ups to the original artwork...
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This is my portrait of Sukamek, a supporting character from my alternate-history novella Carthage Atlantica. His horticultural people, the Inu’naabe, live in villages of bark wigwams scattered along the eastern coast of North America, and they are the first Native Americans (or “Atlanteans”) the Carthaginian colonists from North Africa stumble upon in the story, also becoming their allies and trading partners. Although the Inu’naabe are technically a fictional creation of mine, they are inspired by various Algonquian-speaking communities native to eastern North America such as the Lenape and the Wampanoag.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: After a bitter and bloody conflict, the Vikings and the Zulu are finally willing to put their grievances aside and make peace. And what better way to make peace with your enemy than introducing him to your sister?
(Yes, I know the handshake shown here is a bit awkward since the Viking is using his left hand to shake the Zulu’s right, but then again, you’d do the same if your right arm was busy holding onto your newly acquired Zulu girlfriend).
Had to update the piece by giving the Norse woman a hangerok, or apron over her dress, in order to be more historically accurate.
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66 million years ago in Late Cretaceous North America, this mother Tyrannosaurus rex has slain a Triceratops for herself and her young to feed on as a sort of family picnic. Fresh Triceratops meat is probably a real treat for the kids here!
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This is the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II (1303-1213 BC), also known as “Ramses the Great”, decked out in his military getup. Like all Egyptian Pharaohs, Ramses set out to propagandize himself as the protector of the kingdom as well as the balance between order and chaos, and he was particularly fond of promoting himself as the victor of the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittite Empire in 1275 BC. In real life, however, the battle was most likely a draw between the Egyptians and Hittites which resulted in a pact of non-aggression between the two Bronze Age superpowers.
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This is a combination of the reference sheets for the three leading ladies from my next upcoming novel Women of the Plains, the first draft of which I have recently completed. The story takes place in eastern Africa around 100,000 years ago, with the characters all representing ancestral Homo sapiens prior to the "Out of Africa" migrations a few tens of millennia later. Oja, the woman on the far left, would be the story's protagonist while Uru and Namak are her besties. When Oja gets separated from their nomadic hunter-gatherer band after a hunting accident, she discovers a new land and another people with a very different way of life while her friends go out looking for her.
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The Egyptian Queen Nefertari (d. 1255 BC) catches the balmy rays of the African sun as it sets to the west of the delta city of Pi-Ramesses. In the ancient Egyptian language, Nefertari’s translates to “the most beautiful one”, with nefer– being the word for beauty.
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If you’re a dinosaur with stubby forelimbs like Carnotaurus, it may not make much of a difference if one of them gets bitten off in a fight. Come to think of it, that must have happened quite often with the shorter-armed theropods. I wonder if we’ll ever find fossil evidence for that behavior?
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This is an archer from the Neo-Babylonian Empire, a civilization which rose from the ashes of the Assyrian Empire in the late seventh century BC and dominated the Fertile Crescent until 539 BC. Although archers like this have commonly been used as the Babylonian civilization’s “unique unit” in strategy games like the Civilization series, finding accurate references for their look was not that easy since most of the images that came up were from the Assyrian or Persian civilizations rather than the Babylonians. In the end, I drew upon the Assyrian imagery for this depiction, since the Assyrians and Babylonians would have shared a common cultural and linguistic heritage as Semitic-speaking peoples of southwestern Asia (a group also including the Arab, Phoenician, and Biblical Hebrew peoples).
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Re-posting an old favorite I made around a year ago...
This composition shows the evolution of an enduring and ancient artistic motif which we may call the “Mother and Child”. The first mother is from Neolithic Africa and is inspired by various African sculptures known as “maternity figures”. The second is the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis with her son Horus, also based on sculptural representations. The third is the Biblical Miriam of Nazareth with baby Yeshua, and the fourth is based on medieval European depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.
I got the idea for this artwork after visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which had an exhibit comparing various ancient Egyptian artifacts with those from elsewhere in Africa. One of the comparisons they displayed was between Egyptian representations of Isis suckling baby Horus and one of those African maternity figures I mentioned above. I like to think that the Egyptian images in turn inspired Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.
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Between one million and 10,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, the Americas would have been the hunting grounds of two species of the saber-toothed cat genus Smilodon, Smilodon fatalis in North America and Smilodon populator in South America. Of the two species, S. populator would have been the larger, weighing between 500 and 900 lbs, making it one of the largest cats known to have prowled the earth. S. fatalis, on the other hand, would have been similar in dimensions to a modern lion, but more heavily built, with a mass between 350 and 620 lbs.
Although both species would have ranged far and wide and inhabited a variety of biomes in their respective continents, I wanted my depiction of the northern species to have a more “wintry” color scheme, with white spots on a gray base to blend into snowy environments. The southern species, on the other hand, would be more brown with dark spots to fit into the warmer environments of South America.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: This is a huntress representing the Sao civilization, a culture (or grouping of related cultures) that thrived in fortified towns along the Chari River in southern Chad between the sixth century BC to the sixteenth century AD. Among the artifacts this Central African culture left behind are sculptures of terracotta and bronze as well as funeral urns in which they buried their dead. A number of ethnic groups in the area of Chad and Cameroon, such as the Kanembu, Kotoko, and Sara, claim descent from the Sao, and some legends describe these bygone people as a race of giants.
A second version, for those of you who dislike artistic nudity. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Dunkleosteus terrelli was a fish of the placoderm class that terrorized the Earth’s oceans during the Late Devonian Period, between 382 and 358 million years ago. Characterized by thick bony armor around its skull (which would probably have been covered by skin in life), this carnivorous fish could bite its prey with a force ranging between 1,349 and 1,664 lbs. Estimates of its body length used to run as long as 33 feet, but more recently have been scaled down to around 13 feet.
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This would be a view from behind of my archaeologist heroine Latonya Coleman, whose specialty is returning stolen artifacts to their ancient tombs and temples of origin. She’s become one of my favorite characters I ever created. Think of her as being like Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider games, but also like an antithesis to her.
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I wanted to practice my anatomy some more, so here’s a female figure in a sitting posture. I am not entirely confident about how I foreshortened her right leg, but this was still a fun study to do.
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I did this simple “pin-up” of an unnamed African-American woman bending over with her hands on her thighs because, well, that sort of stuff is always fun to draw.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Yusuf ibn Tashufin (1061-1106 AD) was a ruler of the Muslim Almoravid Empire, which he and his cousin Abu Bakr spread from the Senegal River in West Africa all the way up to what are now Morocco and Algeria. Under Yusuf's leadership, the Almoravids even crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and took control of Muslim Spain, and Yusuf even defeated the Christian king Alfonso VI of Castile at the battle of Sagrajas in 1086 AD. Pictured alongside him here is his wife and queen Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyah, with whom he would have shared power as if she were a co-ruler. They are known to have produced at least three sons together, one of whom was Yusuf's successor Ali ibn Yusuf.
Man, did this attract unwanted attention today on Facebook. One of the comments I had to delete:
And a meme I made to vent: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I tried drawing a Triceratops face seen from the front, using one of my toys as reference. It was hard.
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Sketchbook doodle of a Neanderthal huntsman from Pleistocene Europe. Might give this one digital colors later...
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Gave my Neanderthal some color:
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Itaweret, High Priestess of Mut from the Kemetian colony of Per-Pehu, takes a rest from her quest on some rocks in the Achaean countryside.
For those of you who have not met her yet, Itaweret is the heroine of my novel Priestess of the Lost Colony, which takes place in an alternate timeline wherein the people of Kemet (aka ancient Egypt) colonized the coast of Achaea (Greece) during the Bronze Age. When the Achaean warlord Scylax of Mycenae sacks the colony and enslaves its citizens, it is up to Itaweret and her younger brother Bek, guided by the goddess Mut, to liberate what remains of their people.
Itaweret’s story draws inspiration from a couple of ancient Greek legends about Egyptians settling on their shores. One comes from the writings of Herodotus, who claims that a pair of “black doves” (priestesses) from Egypt founded the Oracle of Dodona, whereas another tells of an Egyptian king’s fifty nieces fleeing to the Greek city of Argos. One scholar, Martin Bernal, has even suggested that these legends reflect an actual Egyptian colonization of Greece in his three-volume work Black Athena, although his hypothesis remains unsupported among archaeologists. Nonetheless, I thought the premise was fair game for an alternate-history story.
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This is my portrait of Zuko, the character who (spoiler alert) becomes Lord of the Fire Nation at the conclusion of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. One can only hope he proves a better ruler for both his people and the world than his predecessors. He ended up becoming one of my favorite characters in the series due to his evolution from being an antagonist to one of the heroes.
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Over eight thousand years ago in northeastern Africa, this Neolithic Egyptian couple is gazing upon the fertile floodplains of the Nile River Valley from the high plains beyond. Back in those days, the Sahara of North Africa would have been a grassy savanna teeming with wildlife and nomadic peoples instead of the barren desert we know today. Once the land began to dry up between 4000 and 3000 BC, some of the people who had roamed it would have fled to the Nile and begun cultivating its banks, leading to the Egyptian and Kushite civilizations of historic times.
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This is my interpretation (with a few minor tweaks) of the Tyrannosaurus rex portrayed in the documentary series “Prehistoric Planet”, narrated by David Attenborough. I have to be honest, I found the series’s portrayal of the Tyrant Lizard King to be underwhelming all in all. It was good to see the animal’s gentler side represented, but I felt that those scenes would have had more meaning if contrasted against seeing the beast in predatory action. That we didn’t see the T. rex doing what T. rex did best was a missed opportunity for what was supposed to be the ultimate, “most accurate” documentary depiction of these animals. I did like the jungle backdrops (presumably representing the southern parts of western North America in the Late Cretaceous) though.
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This is another reconstruction I did of a Natufian woman from the prehistoric Levant circa 15-11,500 years ago. This time, I used as my reference a photo of an actual Natufian skull, which I obtained from the following publication:
Hershkovitz, I., & Arensburg, B. (2017). Human Fossils from the Upper Palaeolithic through the Early Holocene. In Y. Enzel & O. Bar-Yosef (Eds.), Quaternary of the Levant: Environments, Climate Change, and Humans (pp. 611-620). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316106754.068
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Here's an image where you can see the Natufian skull and the reconstruction side by side!
This is a facial reconstruction I did of a skull from the site of Taza in eastern Algeria which dates back to around 16,100 years ago and is associated with tools of the Upper Paleolithic Iberomaurusian culture. In life, the specimen would have been a woman who had her upper incisors removed, a tradition common to her people which persists among Nilotic peoples of East Africa as a preventative measure against lockjaw.
I obtained the photo of the skull from the following publication:
Robert J. Meier, Mohamed Sahnouni, Mohamed Medig, Abdelkader Derradji Anthropologischer Anzeiger, Jahrg. 61, H. 2 (Juni 2003), pp. 129-140
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Had enough spare time today to do another skull-to-flesh reconstruction, so here goes...
The subject of this reconstruction is a woman from the Harappan civilization who lived between 2,200 and 2,600 years ago. Developing along the Indus River in what are now Pakistan and northern India, the Harappans represent the oldest known urban civilization in the South Asian region.
Source of skull image:
Lee, W. J., Shinde, V., Kim, Y. J., Woo, E. J., Jadhav, N., Waghmare, P., Yadav, Y., Munshi, A., Panyam, A., Chatterjee, M., Oh, C. S., Hong, J. H., Wilkinson, C. M., Rynn, C., & Shin, D. H. (2020). Craniofacial reconstruction of the Indus Valley Civilization individuals found at 4500-year-old Rakhigarhi cemetery. Anatomical science international, 95(2), 286–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12565-019-00504-3 Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my reconstruction of a woman whose skeletal remains were found in a medieval cemetery in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic in central Europe), dating back between the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Unlike most inhabitants of the region at that time, her skull’s morphology possesses what appear to be distinctive African traits, suggesting she might be of foreign origin. Perhaps she arrived on a diplomatic errand or married into local nobility?
OK, last reconstruction before I take a break from the subject...
The subject of this reconstruction is an ancient Egyptian woman from the city of Thebes (now Luxor) who lived and died in the first century BC. Nicknamed as the “Mysterious Woman”, she appears to have died in her twenties while pregnant, as her mummified body still had her unborn child in the womb. That, unfortunately, was not an uncommon fate for pregnant women to experience during those harsh times.
I obtained the reference image of her skeleton from the following publication:
Ejsmond, Wojciech & Ożarek-Szilke, Marzena & Jaworski, Marcin & Szilke, Stanisław. (2021). A pregnant ancient egyptian mummy from the 1st century BC. Journal of Archaeological Science. 132. 10.1016/j.jas.2021.105371.
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Euoplocephalus tutus was a smaller, earlier cousin of the armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus that browsed the forests of western Canada during the Late Cretaceous Period. Like its bigger and more famous relative, Euoplocephalus sported a club on the tip of its tail that it might have used to fend off predators such as the tyrannosaurids Gorgosaurus and Daspletosaurus.
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I felt like drawing something cute for a change, so here’s a Triceratops helping himself to a cinnamon roll. It may be a herbivorous dinosaur, but hey, sugar and flour both come from plants!
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Meet Mukeba, who is the main antagonist for a new prehistoric-fantasy novel I am writing which stars my huntress character Nyanja. Mukeba used to be a shaman for his village, but got himself exiled after making repeated unwanted advances on the chieftain's daughter Kabedi. Sometime later while living in solitude in the jungle, Mukeba found a god called the Starborn crashing into the world from the heavens above, and he has agreed to let it possess his body in exchange for the power it offers him (including the ability to shoot red lightning from his fingers).
Now, Mukeba plans to exact revenge on the people who have wronged him, claim Kabedi for himself, and spread the worship of his malevolent god across the world through any means possible, no matter how brutal. And it's up to Nyanja and her allies to stop him!
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This would be a glamorous young lady from the 1920s, that era when movies had no sound or color, everybody was jazzing to jazz, and all the gangsters in the hood were killing each other over a totally different type of illegal mind-altering substance than they are today (here’s a hint: the stuff they were fighting over is neither smoked or injected, but rather consumed in liquid form. Oh, and it became legal again about three years after the decade ended).
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This is my sketch of a tempskya tree, one of a genus of bizarre tree ferns that thrived during the Cretaceous Period. Typified by conjoined stems that formed a “false trunk” with fronds sprouting up its whole height, these plants would most commonly grown in lowlands near water sources such as rivers and wetlands. I think they look really cool, personally!
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Somewhere in Central America, a large American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) is ready to show a hapless jaguar who really stands at the top of the food chain!
Almost every article on jaguars lists crocodilians as among their prey, so I thought it only fair to depict a moment in which the tables got turned. Although American crocodiles don’t seem to have the fearsome reputation as their cousins the Nile and saltwater crocodiles, they do take large prey such as cattle from time to time, and males of the species can get quite big, with recorded maximums of twenty feet in length and two thousand pounds in weight. Since jaguars by comparison seldom weight more than three hundred and fifty pounds, it seems probable to me that they would fall within the prey range of American crocs.
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This is a humble soldier from the relatively obscure African country of Agisymba, which the Roman geographer Ptolemy mentions in his work the Geography in the second century AD. Drawing from an account by Marinus of Tyre, Agisymba lay around four months’ travel south of the Central Saharan kingdom of the Garamantes, which may locate it somewhere north of Lake Chad. It appears to have been fertile enough to support megafauna such as rhinoceros. Little other information exists about Agisymba and its people at that time, but it’s possible they were forerunners of later central Sahelian kingdoms such as medieval Kanem.
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I've updated my three commissioned artworks of Sekhmet, Ma'at, and Kali from 2021 so that they have golden auras of divinity as well as depigmented palms (the latter trait is common to all human populations, but more noticeable in the darker-skinned ones of Africa, South Asia, and Australasia).
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This is my portrayal of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess who presides over knowledge, music, arts, and speech. The musical instrument she is playing here (which was a real pain to draw, in all honesty) is an Indian version of the lute called the veena, which often appears in representations of her.
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This is my portrayal of Aja, who is the orisha (divinity) of the jungle and herbal medicines in the Yoruba pantheon from Nigeria.
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150 million years ago in North America during the Late Jurassic Period, this Stegosaurus is wallowing in some mud. It may look filthy, but it lets the dinosaur cool off and protect their hide from those noxious Mesozoic mosquitoes!
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It is 54 BC in the Egyptian desert south of Alexandria, and two young princesses named Cleopatra and Amanirenas (left and right, respectively) who were out racing their chariots must flee a mob of hostile Libyan tribesmen!
This is actually an illustration for a short “historical adventure” story I recently drafted (it still needs some editing before I can share it) which stars Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (aka the infamous Cleopatra) and Amanirenas of Kush as teenage girls yet to ascend to their thrones. Since both of these queens seem to have been contemporaneous, I wanted to depict them as possibly being friends during their childhood years. Of course, they would be a lot safer racing in the hippodrome back in Alexandria, but Cleo felt doing it out in the wilderness would be more fun.
And, yes, there is some inspiration from the animated movie "The Prince of Egypt" behind this scene (as well as the story’s whole premise).
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“Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil. But a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law. Now the fool seeks to return to the past and undo the evil that is Aku.”
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A quick sketchbook doodle of Cleopatra in her battle armor, mixing ancient Egyptian and Macedonian elements. This is meant to be more of a fun idea than historically accurate, although who knows, maybe she did fight in battles that somehow escaped mention from the surviving historical accounts. The curbed sword she is holding is a kopis like that ancient Greek and Macedonian warriors would have used.
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75 million years ago in Late Cretaceous Asia, a male Oviraptor philoceratops offers his mate an egg he has stolen from another dinosaur’s nest for breakfast while she broods over their own. When the first Oviraptor fossils were discovered over a nest of eggs in the 1920s, the paleontologists who found them thought the dinosaur was stealing the eggs to eat, when we now know it is more likely it was brooding over its own nest. Nonetheless, it seems possible to me that Oviraptor could still have used its powerful beak to crack open other dinosaurs’ eggs, as well as tough fruit and nuts.
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While exploring the ruins of a prehistoric temple out in the Sudanese desert, the queens Amanirenas and Cleopatra (left and right, respectively) discover a clutch of old “dragon eggs” which their ancestors believed represented the brood of Apep, the serpent of chaos in the Egyptian and Kushite religions. However, these two women have more to fear than the wrath of a mythical snake deity…
This is an illustration I did for The Brood of Apep, another short story I wrote starring these two historical queens of the Nile Valley. It’s a sequel to my earlier story Racing Into Trouble, taking place a couple of decades later, when both Cleopatra and Amanirenas have come of age and ascended to the thrones of their respective kingdoms.
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This is a guard representing the Nabatean civilization which developed in the region of Jordan starting in the sixth century BC. Although their native language was an early form of Arabic, they later adopted a related language called Aramaic for official and commercial purposes. Their capital, Petra, has become world-famous for its rock-cut architecture, which show substantial influence from the Greco-Macedonian cultures which dominated much of the eastern Mediterranean during this period.
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70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period, this Carnotaurus sastrei is jogging across the savannas of South America. It could be looking either for prey to chase after or a drink to cool off. Or maybe it’s patrolling its territory.
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This is my portrait of Ibn Tumart (1080-1130 AD), a Muslim religious scholar and preacher whose zealous, puritanical teachings inspired the Almohad movement in North Africa, which eventually wrested control of the region from the ruling Almoravid dynasty. He descended from a confederation of Amazigh-speaking people called the Masmuda who occupied the Atlas Mountains.
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Masinissa (also spelled Massinissa) was the first king of a united Numidia, a kingdom that spread between modern Tunisia and Algeria along the North African coastline. Originally composed of several tribes and clans, the Numidians were a Berber-speaking ethnic group famous for their horsemanship. Prior to bringing the Numidians together under his leadership, Masinissa first fought as an ally of Carthage against the Romans during the Second Punic War, but then switched sides to help the Roman invasion.
Once the war ended and he became king of all Numidia, he sought to “modernize” his country by introducing agricultural techniques from Carthage and then impelling many of his once nomadic people to settle down as farmers. Unfortunately for the Numidians, their kingdom’s future would take a turbulent turn after Masinissa’s death, struggling with both intermittent disunion and Roman pressure until the Romans finally took control of the area in 46 BC. From that point forward, Numidia’s name would live on as that of a province in the Roman Empire.
(This is a redraw of an artwork I did back in 2018. I wanted the updated version to have more distinctly North African facial features as well as an elephant-hide shield. The original is below.)
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This is my depiction of a Roman centurion, so named because they were the officers who each commanded a “century” of one hundred soldiers in the Roman legions. I gotta say they had some funky helmets, sorta like Greek hoplites’ helmets except for the distinctive crest running side to side instead of front to back.
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This is my simple doodle of a retro-style Tyrannosaurus rex smelling the air by sticking its tongue out in the manner of a modern lizard. Consider it a tribute to the days when people reconstructed dinosaurs in a much more lacertilian style than they do today.
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This is a war wagon from the Sumerian civilization of ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Kuwait). Think of it as being a primitive predecessor of the Bronze Age’s famous horse-drawn chariots. Instead of horses, however, the Sumerians would have used a different species of equine native to western Asia known as onagers (Equus hemionus).
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I did this portrait of a random Egyptian woman while not in the best of moods, I must admit (I don't want to get into the reasons why publicly). I might give her a more detailed background to make the piece more interesting later.
UPDATE: I decided that giving it a papyrus-like texture in Photoshop would spice up the piece a bit. Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
I did this portrait of a random Egyptian woman while not in the best of moods, I must admit (I don't want to get into the reasons why publicly).
did the mood have any influence on the art?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
I did this portrait of a random Egyptian woman while not in the best of moods, I must admit (I don't want to get into the reasons why publicly).
did the mood have any influence on the art?
I don't want to get into it here.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my redesign for the tyrannosaurs in a fantasy world of mine I used to call “Panjuru” (it is awaiting a new name now). These tyrannosaurs’ scientific name would be Thanatotyrannus imperator, but the people in this setting call them “deathjaws” in reference to their bone-crushing bites. I felt the original design I had for this species looked too front-heavy and so attempted a more balanced version while still retaining the “upgraded T. rex” concept.
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This is my reconstruction of a young male Homo sapiens from around 33,000 years ago whose skeletal remains were found at the site of Nazlet Khater in southern Egypt. Lesions found in his vertebrae and limb bones suggest he was involved in intensive quarrying for stone to use for tools. Since his skull’s facial features show similarities to peoples from much more southerly areas in the African continent, I went with a South Sudanese appearance for him, but his black kohl eyeliner is meant to evoke later Nile Valley makeup traditions.
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This is a portrait of a young beauty from ancient Kush (aka Nubia) in what is now northern Sudan, with a papyrus texture effect applied to the picture.
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Somewhere on the grassy plains of ancient East Africa, a rhinoceros-riding warrior is defending her people’s territory against some intruding tribal marauders!
None of the characters in this artwork are meant to represent specific cultures, but the marauders do have a bit of a Maasai inspiration informing their appearance.
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Simbakubwa kutokaafrika was a large predatory mammal that prowled Africa around 23 million years ago, during the early Miocene epoch. Approximating the size of a rhinoceros, it may have looked like a big cat with a dog- or hyena-like head, yet it belonged to another group of carnivorous mammals known as the hyaenodonts which died out around nine million years ago. It probably hunted primitive rhinos and elephant cousins, dispatching them with its large shearing teeth and powerful bite.
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This is a pencil drawing of Hatzegopteryx thambema, a pterosaur of the azhdarchid family which soared over the islands of Europe during the Late Cretaceous around 66 million years ago. With a wingspan approaching forty feet in length, it would have been among the largest flying creatures known from the fossil record.
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Remember that rhino-riding warrior woman I drew about a week ago? Her name is Wangari, and she's from an ancient (probably) Bantu-speaking culture in East Africa called the Urewe. When she was in her teens, she adopted an orphaned white rhino calf whom she named Kimani and has since ridden him as a sort of steed while protecting her people's homeland. I have a whole story written for this character which is awaiting a colleague's edits.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of two portraits representing the Polynesian peoples. The Polynesians are a branch of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group which spread from the island of Taiwan and dispersed throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, with the Polynesians reaching as far afield as New Zealand, Easter Island (or Rapa Nui), and of course the Hawaiian Islands. Although most Polynesian ancestry is related to that of Southeast Asians like the Malays and Filipinos, about twenty percent of it can be traced to admixture with the darker-skinned Australasian peoples indigenous to Oceania.
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This scene of a jungle man armed with a spear was, of course, inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs’s iconic character Tarzan and his various cinematic incarnations (not least of which was the Disney animated one from 1999). In all honesty, a jungle hero or heroine who is a native African person instead of the usual orphaned White dude or dudette is something I’d love to see in a movie someday.
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This bull Triceratops has had one of its brow horns broken in a joust with a conspecific during the mating season. I used one of my toys as reference when drawing this, but added plenty of my own embellishments.
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Sketchbook doodle of an Aboriginal Australian dude wearing one of those iconic hats with dangling corks. I believe those corks are supposed to keep the continent’s noxious insects away.
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It’s an Egyptian warrior queen riding a Carcharodontosaurus. How is that not totally sweet?
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This is my rendition of a scene from the movie Jurassic Park in which the main cast sets eyes on a Brachiosaurus roaming among eucalyptus trees on the island of Isla Nublar. I did this in celebration of the movie’s thirtieth anniversary.
What makes this scene particularly potent for me is that it shows the awesome power of witnessing an extinct dinosaur that had been extinct for a hundred and fifty million years in the flesh. You can sense the characters’ disbelief upon laying eyes on a living creature that they had only known from fossils and artistic reconstructions. That experience is something none of the movie’s sequels, even the better ones, could replicate since they all take place at a point in time when everyone has come to take cloned dinosaurs for granted. There’s really something to be said for the initial revelation of seeing those animals alive for the first time, and that’s what I wanted to capture here.
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I did this beauty in a beach outfit to get out of an art slump. You gotta admit, drawing the female form is a great way to get your inspiration back!
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
what would the greater fulfillment be?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: what would the greater fulfillment be?
What do you mean?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Anyway... A second “beach beauty” pin-up. This time, I wanted to experiment with brighter highlights on the skin.
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This is a sketchbook doodle of a female Homo erectus who has her hair styled into dreadlocks. I am not sure whether Homo erectus would have bothered with hair-styling like this, but it is a nice thought nonetheless, and it does go against the grain of depicting them with a simple bush or mane of hair on their heads.
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Link to NSFW image Homo bodoensis is a proposed term for the hominin populations that occupied Africa around 500,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene Epoch. They are thought to have been the immediate ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens, with a cranial capacity approaching the low end of the modern human range.
The loincloth I have given this female specimen, I must admit, is entirely a concession to modern sensibilities. Given that modern clothing lice have emerged as a distinct lineage little more than 170,000 years ago according to genetic research, it’s likely that African hominins living before that date such as H. bodoensis would not have bothered with clothing at all.
UPDATE: Alternate version with a bra.
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Sketch of the face of Homo bodoensis, the possible immediate ancestor of modern humans (Homo sapiens), using the Bodo cranium from Ethiopia as reference. If you're wondering why her forehead looks so small, long and low braincases are pretty typical for "archaic" hominins outside the H. sapiens species.
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It's been a while since I last drew Hatshepsut, the most famous of ancient Egypt's female Pharaohs (after Cleopatra VII, of course), so I wanted to revisit her yet again. She's probably my favorite Pharaoh in all Egyptian history to draw!
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Dryptosaurus aquilunguis was a medium-sized predatory dinosaur that hunted in eastern North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 67 and 66 million years ago. Growing up to 25 feet long and weighing almost two tons, it would have been a distant relative and contemporary to Tyrannosaurus rex, although they would have lived on opposite sides of the Western Interior Seaway that divided the continent at the time. Its main prey would probably have been hadrosaurid (or “duck-billed”) dinosaurs.
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I gave my "Evolution of Woman" artwork from 2020 a few retouches today. It's still one of my favorite art pieces I ever did.
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It’s a color wheel with dinosaurs!
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This is a cavalryman from the medieval empire of Mali that dominated West Africa between 1230 and 1672 AD. Mali was one of a number of equestrian empires and kingdoms that developed in Africa’s northern savanna belt, although the tsetse flies which swarmed the continent’s equatorial regions prevented the spread of horses further south.
Finding accurate, contemporary depictions of Malian cavalry was not easy, so a lot of guesswork went into this image. However, imported chain mail is known to have been available to them, and the ruler Mansa Musa (c. 1312-1337 AD) probably introduced stirrups into the region after his famous pilgrimage to Mecca.
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Re-posting my old depiction of the Zenata warrior queen Dihya al-Kahina...
Boy, did this attract a bunch of nasty people on social media back in the day.
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Nyanja, my dinosaur-fighting jungle girl character, is leaping into battle with her obsidian-tipped spear!
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“That’s not a knife. This is a knife.”
I know race- and gender-swapping established characters for media reboots is controversial (and, in some cases, amounts to little more than a gimmick meant to drum up sales or attention), but I wanted to see how a character cut from the same “Australian bush hero” cloth as Crocodile Dundee would look as an Aboriginal Australian woman. In all honesty, while I don’t necessarily want a remake of the 1986 movie, I think such a character could have potential in their own story.
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Using Clip Studio Paint's built-in animation tools, I made a little animation out of my "Evolution of Woman" sequence!
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This huntress represents the Changbinian culture, a hunter-gatherer culture that occupied the semitropical island of Taiwan between 30,000 and 6,000 years ago. Analysis of skeletal remains from the site of Xioma Cave dating to 6,000 years ago suggests that the people behind this culture were similar in phenotype to the short-statured, dark-skinned Negrito peoples aboriginal to much of Southeast Asia.
After that date, these indigenous Taiwanese would be absorbed by Proto-Austronesian peoples who migrated to Taiwan from the Asian mainland, followed by Han Chinese settlers in the 1660s whose descendents form the majority of the island’s population today. However, many of the Austronesian tribes remaining in Taiwan retain legends of “small black people” preceding them, and some Chinese documents from the era of the Qing Dynasty mention the presence of such Negrito-like people as well. Alas, no one has reported these people surviving in the present day to the best of my knowledge.
If you’re wondering what this woman’s loincloth is made out of, it is the hide of the extinct Formosan clouded leopard that used to live on Taiwan.
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To make this beach girl stand out a bit from other ones I’ve drawn, I decided to give her bikini a “Black American Heritage Flag” theme.
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The inspiration for this random T. rex head I doodled in my sketchbook was a photo I took of the T. rex skeleton mounted in the American Museum of Natural History back in February of 2022. However, I didn't follow the reference exactly.
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Somewhere in the American Southwest, the intrepid archaeologist Latonya Coleman descends into a canyon decorated with Native American petroglyphs that are thousands of years old.
Latonya is a character I created that was inspired by the likes of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones, yet she differs from those other adventuring archaeologists in one crucial respect. Instead of breaking into ancient tombs and temples to retrieve artifacts, she returns them to their places of origin. Think of her as the “Tomb Savior”!
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50,000 years ago in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, an ancestress of the indigenous Negrito peoples faces off against a hungry tiger!
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I wanted to give the woman in my earlier artwork “Southeast Asian Showdown” a name and a story. She is Ungu, an ancestral East Eurasian woman who lives in Southeast Asia around 50,000 years ago. In the short story I have written for her, she rescues a Denisovan child named Tomtuk (also pictured here) from a tiger and must return him to his mother, whom another clan of Denisovans captured in a brutal skirmish.
By the way, the weapon Ungu is holding to her lips here is a blowgun like that used by some Southeast Asian and Native American peoples, and the “pins” in her hair are the darts for it.
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Deep in the jungles of Late Cretaceous northeastern Africa strolls Mansourasaurus shahinae, a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived between 74 and 72 million years ago. The holotype specimen for this species was not particularly large for a sauropod, stretching between 26 and 33 feet length and weighing about as much as a bull African elephant, but it appears to have been a juvenile since its shoulder girdle bones had not yet fused.
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This is my depiction of Medea, a mythical princess and enchantress from the kingdom of Colchis in the western Caucasus (where there now lies the modern country of Georgia). Gifted with prophetic abilitiy, Medea helped the Greek hero Jason of the Argonauts obtain the Golden Fleece and became his wife.
However, a later tragic drama by the playwright Euripides portray Medea and Jason’s relationship as ending unhappily, with her murdering their two sons after Jason abandoned her for the princess of Corinth (whom Medea murders as well, along with her father). Taking refuge in Athens, Medea marries their ruler Aegeus, but he then has her cast out after she tried to poison his son Theseus.
Despite Colchis’s Caucasian location, the Greek historian Herodotus proposed that its people came from Egypt on account of their relatively dark skin and some shared cultural practices (e.g. weaving techniques and ritual circumcision). I am not aware of any harder evidence for a connection between the Colchians and Egypt or any other African country, but his conjecture did inspire me to give Medea a rich honey-brown complexion.
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This is my portrait of Hagar, an enslaved woman of Egyptian descent who appears in Chapter 16 of the biblical Book of Genesis. She belonged to the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarai, the latter of whom had Hagar act as a surrogate mother since she could not conceive a child herself. However, Sarai and Hagar did not get along, causing Hagar to flee into the wilderness. There, a messenger of Yahweh (the biblical God) told her to return to her owners and put up with their abuse, but then bear them a son named Ishmael who would be “a wild ass of a man”. Not my preferred form of divine justice, honestly speaking, but I suppose burdening your owners with an unruly child would be better than nothing.
I don’t know for certain what sort of clothing an enslaved Egyptian person serving Hebrew owners would wear, but here I went with more-or-less Hebrew-style clothing with an Egyptian color palette (blue and gold).
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Under the sea during the Late Cretaceous Period, around 66 million years ago, Mosasaurus hoffmannii pursues an ammonite for lunch. Stretching between thirty and sixty feet in length, this massive predatory sea lizard would have most likely been the apex predator of the Late Cretaceous oceans. Its closest living relatives would be snakes and monitor lizards such as the Komodo dragon.
If you’re wondering what those pink things with the tentacles in the lower right corner are, they are rudists, an order of molluscs that would have dominated reefs during the Cretaceous Period. They died out approximately at the same time as the mosasaurs and the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
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I want to share some of the references I used for creating my portrait of the mythical princess/enchantress Medea of Colchis. Authentic artifacts from ancient Colchis are not easy to come by online, but what I was able to find include a gold piece from a headdress, a gold necklace with turtle pendants, and a coin depicting a Colchian person who appears to be wearing cornrows (a type of braided hairstyle commonly associated with both African and Aegean cultures).
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Queen Kassi was the wife of the Malian Mansa Suleyman (r. 1341-1360 AD), who like most Malian queens would have shared power with her husband. Although Kassi enjoyed substantial popularity with the nobility of the royal court, her husband divorced her to pursue a relationship and then marriage with a commoner named Bendjou. Understandably incensed by both her loss of power and her husband’s infidelity, Kassi and her supporters instigated a civil war by revolting around 1352, although Suleyman and his faction ended up winning. It goes to show you, however, that hell hath no wrath like a spouse scorned (or cheated on).
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I wanted to make the subject of this drawing look like a classical marble bust. I’ve often seen White supremacists and politically adjacent “traditionalists” point to old marble sculptures as evidence of the superiority of “Western” (read European) civilization, or perhaps as a symbol of how great that civilization used to be before the onset of “modernity” (as in the pre-socially progressive era), so I wanted to see how an African woman would look as the subject of one of those marble busts.
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This is a character concept that came to me in a dream. I don’t have a whole story or even a name for her yet, but she’s essentially a traveling sellsword from Egypt (or a fantasy world’s equivalent thereof) who has made her way to imperial (pseudo-) China. I have to say that combining Egyptian and Chinese motifs was fun, if a bit challenging at the same time.
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To break out of another art block, I doodled the head of that mercenary character I recently created. I'm thinking about naming her "Bunefer".
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Perucetus colossus was an early whale of the basilosaurid family that swam in the oceans of the Eocene epoch between 39 and 37 million years ago. The study describing it estimated its weight as ranging between 94 and 375 tons, which would make it the most massive animal to have ever lived (for comparison, the modern blue whale has a maximum weight under 220 tons). So far, however, only parts of its rib cage and spinal column as well as vestigal hips have been found.
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Three doodles from my recent vacation to the Channel Islands:
A sexy succubus.
Anubis, ancient Egyptian god of embalming and funerary rites.
Random woman with a purse.
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I did this sketchbook doodle while on a trip to the Channel Islands off the coast of California. It depicts one of the pygmy mammoths (Mammuthus exilis) that used to roam the islands, with a Paleoindian huntress standing next to it for comparison. I wanted the woman to represent the ancestors of the Chumash people who had settled on the Channel Islands in pre-Columbian times, but I didn’t have a reference handy (cell-phone reception on the boat and the island we went to was not great), so I admit her costume may not be that culturally accurate.
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Just a silly idea I came up with…what if you could represent different nations of the world with eggs?
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This is a moment of intimacy between the leading man and lady of my historical-fiction novelette "The Slave Prince of Zimbabwe". The man here is Drazhan Khazanov, a native of the medieval Eastern European country of Ruthenia who is brought in chains to southern Africa under the ownership of the Swahili sultan of Kilwa. Drazhan ends up teaming up with Ruvarashe, the Mambokadzi (Queen) of Zimbabwe (who is the woman in this picture), against his former master, who in turn has the might of Song Dynasty China to back him up!
I have to say that Drazhan and Ruva are among my favorite couples I’ve ever created for a story.
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This is my interpretation of Katara, the leading lady from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Although her water-bending culture drew heavy inspiration from Inuit and Native American cultures, I feel that her people’s combination of darker skin and blue eyes makes them look like Mesolithic inhabitants of western Europe after the last ice age, so that is how I chose to depict her.
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We’re all familiar with the science fiction scenario about cloning dinosaurs from fossils for a zoo. But what if we went back in time and visited them in their native habitats instead? Of course, we’d probably be viewing them from the safety of an airborne vehicle, unless someone really wanted to get close to the animals.
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This is a map I made for my next novel-in-progress, which I am calling "Nyanja and the Starborn Terror" for the time being. It's a prehistoric fantasy novel set in a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist, with the main human culture (the Abanti) being loosely based on the Proto-Bantu cultures of ancient West/Central Africa.
As you can see, the geography of this map draws inspiration from the area straddling modern Nigeria and Cameroon. At this point in the world's history, the Abanti peoples all live in small, autonomous villages along the Nzadi River. They practice horticulture alongside hunting and fishing for subsistence, but have not yet developed metallurgic technology.
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For "Throwback Thursday" this week, I wanted to share a triplet of drawings of women from predynastic Egypt that I did back in 2018. IMHO, the predynastic is among the most underrated periods of ancient Egyptian history. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Went on another family trip this weekend, and these are the doodles I did!
This is my portrayal of a woman from the Neolithic village of Nea Nikomedeia in the region of Macedonia, which dates to around 6250 to 6050 BC. As a Neolithic farming culture, the people of Nea Nikomedeia would have grown crops like wheat and barley and raised livestock such as sheeop, goats, pigs, and cattle. Despite their sedentary and agricultural lifestyle, they would not have developed metal tools yet.
Like most Neolithic farmers in southern Europe, these villagers would have traced most of their ancestry to migrants from the Anatolian peninsula (modern Turkey). However, some physical anthropologists such as J. Lawrence Angel have remarked on the people of Nea Nikomedeia’s skeletal remains as showing some physical traits indicative of African ancestry, which might suggest admixture with North African peoples.
I drew both of these female faces on one sheet of sketchbook paper. The woman to the upper right is a prehistoric Native American wearing the fangs of a saber-toothed cat on her necklace, whereas the woman to the lower left is a modern African-American with sunglasses.
I always thought the combination of black trench coats and sunglasses looked cool (you can credit the Matrix films for that, so here’s a sketchbook doodle of a beautiful woman in such getup.
Gojira, the infamous King of the Monsters, lets out a devastating blast of atomic breath from his maw!
This ancient Egyptian woman with dreads hanging from one side was inspired by Senna from the game League of Legends.
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This Otodus megalodon is munching on the leg of an early elephant it has caught swimming offshore. O. megalodon was a giant shark that swam in the oceans between 23 and 3.6 million years ago, during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Stretching anywhere between 50 and 67 feet in length, it was likely the marine apex predator of its time.
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This is a quick little photo-manipulation I did in Photoshop. The base was an ancient marble bust of the king Juba I of ancient Numidia, but the facial expression comes from the rapper Xzibit and I added the colors myself.
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Out on the grassy plains of West Africa, this huntress is aiming her arrow with her loyal hyena standing behind her.
I didn’t have a particular culture in mind when designing the character, but if I had to pick one for her post hoc, she would be an ancestress to Mandé peoples like the Soninke and Mandinka who would later found empires like Wagadou (or old Ghana) and Mali.
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This is a commission I did for a recurring client, who wanted me to draw a woman from ancient North Africa in her early fifties. This woman would actually be the mother to another character of the client’s creation named Malika.
This is Malika BTW.
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Thirteen thousand years ago on the wintry plains of Pleistocene North America, this Paleo-Native American hunting party is going up against a lone bull woolly mammoth!
Given that prehistoric humans attacking mammoths or other elephants is one of the most enduring tropes of paleoart, it would be remiss of me not to do my own spin on it.
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This started out as a simple illustration of a prehistoric jungle girl climbing up some branches emerging from the jungle canopy. To give her a more specific identity, I modeled her knife after the distinctively elongated stone blades of the Lupemban industry, a Middle Stone Age lithic industry that spread across the Congo Basin in central Africa over 265,000 years ago. The people behind this culture would have been either early Homo sapiens or a related hominin species.
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Today, I would like to announce that I have a new shop for my artwork on INPRNT!
This Aboriginal Australian hunter is wielding a special type of throwing stick best known today as a boomerang. Having become iconic for Australia and its indigenous cultures, boomerangs are famous for flying back to their owner after being thrown, but only a minority of Aboriginal boomerangs would have actually possessed this aerodynamic ability. Nonetheless, whether returning or not, boomerangs would have been useful not only for hunting game such as birds and marsupials, but also as weapons of war and digging sticks.
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Deep in the rainforests of Central Africa around 265,000 years ago, this huntress from the Lupemban culture is leaping down with her knife drawn for the kill!
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Thumbnail sketch for my next illustration. Imagine a huntress in ancient Melanesia using a primitive ballista to take on the King of Monsters!
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Somewhere in the South Pacific in ancient times, this Melanesian huntress must defend her island home from the wrath of Gojira, King of Monsters, with a rudimentary ballista!
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This portrait is a birthday gift I did for my friend Punos Rey which represents him as a general from ancient Carthage in North Africa, since he has an interest in pan-African history.
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This is Anyango, the leading lady from my short story “The Raid on Camp Struthers”, which takes place in the protectorate of British East Africa around 1896 AD. She has become the queen regent of the Sibour nation (whom I based on the Luo people from the region), for the British colonial authorities has arrested her brother the king for refusing to pay their oppressive taxes and are holding him hostage at a place called Camp Struthers. When Anyango accosts the American diamond prospector Jack Erwin for trespassing in her people’s territory, he offers to help her free her brother from the British in exchange for her sparing him.
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Meet Jack Erwin, the leading man from my (short story “The Raid on Camp Struthers” which takes place around 1896 AD (right now it is awaiting revision). Hailing from a struggling family in rural Kansas, Jack has spent an arm and a leg venturing to the colonial protectorate of British East Africa in search of diamond wealth. After the local warrior queen Anyango accosts him for trespassing and stealing from her people, Jack offers to help her rescue her brother from imprisonment by a British colonial garrison to redeem himself in her eyes.
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This is Col. William Struthers, who is the antagonist of my short story “The Raid on Camp Struthers” which takes place around 1896 AD. Overseeing a colonial garrison in the protectorate of British East Africa (the titular camp being named after his family), Col. Struthers has captured and imprisoned King Oburu of the local Sibour people for refusing to pay the colonial regime’s oppressive taxes. It is up to Oburu’s sister Anyango, together with the American diamond prospector Jack Erwin, to free him from Struthers and his men’s clutches.
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This woman has painted herself with a skeletal motif in celebration of Halloween!
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This is my portrait of Twosret (or Tausret), the last Pharaoh of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, who reigned between 1191 and 1189 BC. At first she was the second royal wife of Seti II, but after her husband died, she become regent for their stepson Siptah, who in turn passed away at age sixteen after a brief reign of only six years. This tragic development would have promoted Twosret to become another one of Egypt’s female Pharaohs.
However, Twosret’s reign as queen regnant proved even shorter than her stepson’s, ending with a civil war that led to a man named Setnakhte seizing power and founding the Twentieth Dynasty. Setnakhte and his son Ramses III would later describe the dynasty before them as ending in chaos and even went so far as to omit Twosret and Siptah from official kings’ lists to deny their reigns’ legitimacy.
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This is a scimitar-wielding Moorish maiden I designed for the sheer fun of it. It’s not supposed to be a historically accurate design, which is honestly a shame, since I really like how she came out!
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Diplodocus carnegii was a sauropod dinosaur that roamed the savannas of North America during the Late Jurassic Period, between 154 and 152 million years ago. It was related to the more famous Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus with whom it would have coexisted, yet had a significantly lighter build, weighing little more than sixteen tons. Nonetheless, Diplodocus is among the longest dinosaurs known from a complete skeleton, stretching up to 85 feet from head to tail.
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This is a map I made of what medieval Britain might look like if the Islamic Moors were to expand beyond their Iberian holdings and conquer it (along with France and Ireland) in the mid-8th century AD. I have to admit that I'm not 100% confident about some of the place names here, since I obtained most of them from Googling "Arabic word for X". Sorry, Arabic is not a language I know.
One thing I did learn, however, is that "Majus" was the Arabic term for the Vikings.
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I was fond enough of my earlier “Moorish Maiden” character design that I did a second, full-body version of her. I think I will name her Halawa.
By the way, the tiled background is also of my own design, inspired by the geometric patterns prevalent in Islamic art.
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While traveling deep in the forests of Al-Biritania, the Moorish princess Halawa ibnat Omar has stumbled upon a vicious fire-breathing dragon!
This is an illustration I did for another one of my short stories, which I would describe as a cross between fantasy and alternate history. It takes place in a version of early medieval Britain that the Moors from North Africa have conquered and made into the Sultanate of Al-Biritania. Halawa here is searching for an ancient treasure she believes will heal her ailing father the Sultan, and the dragon is one of the obstacles she will face on her quest!
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This Olmec warrior wields a club lined with sharp obsidian bladelets to defend his Mesoamerican homeland from Egyptian interlopers!
This is of course not something that likely happened in real history, but who cares, it’s still a cool “what-if” scenario.
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150 million years ago on the ferny savannas of Late Jurassic North America, two Allosaurus fragilis squabble over territory. Far overhead the battling dinosaurs soars the pterosaur Harpactognathus gentryii.
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75,000 years ago, an early Homo sapiens woman must eliminate the great white shark that has been terrorizing the coast of South Africa!
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This female Homo bodoensis, who represents the hominin species hypothesized to be the immediate ancestors of modern Homo sapiens, is throwing a spear while charging at her prey. Both the spear’s stone point and the knife she has strapped to her left thigh would have been fashioned using the Levallois knapping technique which was characteristic of tools made during the Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Stone Age) circa 300,000 years ago.
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This would be a female of the species Homo neanderthalensis which roamed Europe and western Asia between 430,000 and 40,000 years ago. The blond hair is speculative, but any form of light pigmentation in either hair or skin makes sense to me for a hominin species adapted to the northern European environment.
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40,000 years ago on the grassy steppes of Pleistocene Europe, a Neanderthal trader plies some exquisite furs of his to an Aurignacian (Homo sapiens) couple. Although modern humans like the Aurignacians would end up displacing the Neanderthals in Europe, some peaceful interactions between the two hominin lineages must have taken place, especially considering the genetic evidence for interbreeding between them in Eurasia.
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Toussaint Louverture, champion of the Haitian Revolution, must defend the freedom of his people from the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte! In case it isn’t clear, Toussaint is the dude riding the T. rex and Napoleon is the one on the woolly mammoth.
In real history, although Napoleon never invaded Haiti himself, he did send a punitive force to capture Toussaint and enslave the Haitians all over again. The general leading this force, Charles Leclerc, did succeed in catching Toussaint and deporting him to the French Alps, but Haitian freedom fighters were nonetheless able to drive off the French over the course of a year.
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Nice picture of Haitian freedom fighter Napoleon fighting the French enslaver General Leclerc.
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Meditating your way to enlightenment is hard and energy-intensive work, as Buddha knows all too well.
This is not meant to be historically accurate, by the way. For example, I doubt Buddha, if he was real at all, wore his hair in an Afro bun. However, given how many Buddhist sculptures depict him with what appears to be such a hairstyle, that’s the look I wanted him to have.
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Captain Jack Sparrow, accompanied by a local guide (who happens to be doubling as his inamorata of the moment), is probing the ruins on the legendary Skull Island for treasure. But they are about to have some unwelcome company join them, and it’s the kind of company that prefers fresh and bloody meat to a bottle of rum.
In all honesty, even though it’s only the very first Pirates of the Caribbean movie that I would consider all that good, I must admit I’d love to see the next film in the franchise have the premise illustrated here. Skull-themed islands are already ubiquitous in pirate-themed media, and if you were to cross that over with the alternate trope of the “skull island” as a lost world with dinosaurs and ancient ruins, then you’d have an adventure worthy of Captain Jack and his crew.
I don’t necessarily think it likely that such a film will ever come to fruition, though. As hard as it to imagine anyone replacing Johnny Depp as Sparrow, he has grown a bit old for the role of the daring swashbuckler even if we disregard how divisive a figure he has became thanks to the whole drama with his ex-wife (which I haven’t really followed and therefore can’t give you an informed verdict on). Still, I can see him voice-acting his character for an animated film, and we all know how Disney does better with animation than live action on average anyway.
If you’re wondering which interpretation of Skull Island I’m going for here, it’s my own, albeit inspired most by the version in Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong remake.
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This is a map I made in the program Wonderdraft that shows my personal take on the archetypal “Skull Island” as seen in various pirate- and adventure-themed media.
Unlike some other variations of the trope, my version is located deep within the equatorial Atlantic Ocean and owes its flora and fauna to migrations over the course of at least 150 million years. The island’s most iconic megafauna are the dinosaurs and other descendants of Mesozoic migrants. However, later arrivals have managed to eke out their own niches beneath the giant saurians, including monkeys related to New World platyrrhines, gorillas and chimpanzees, elephants of African forest affinity, pantherine cats of mixed leopard and jaguar heritage, and even phorusrhacid “terror birds”.
The island’s human inhabitants would have arrived from the West African coast sometime before 2000 BC, bringing with them established traditions of agriculture and ferrous metallurgy that allowed them to colonize the treacherous landscape and carve it into numerous chiefdoms and states over the course of centuries. The most famous of these societies, the so-called “Kingdom of the Skull”, developed in the rainforest on the windward side of the volcanic “Mountains of Hell”, but fell into ruin at an uncertain date, although local traditions attribute its collapse to provoking the wrath of a deity known as the “Flaming Skull”. Nonetheless, the islanders remain numerous across the island’s breadth, maintaining a rich variety of distinctive cultures and dozens of different languages, albeit all sharing what may be a distant kinship with the Gbe languages of coastal West Africa.
It was in the late 1400s when Portuguese mariners first chanced upon the Island of the Skull and shared their knowledge with other Europeans. Nonetheless, both the mosasaur-haunted waters encircling the island and its own hostile terrain have discouraged large-scale European colonial expeditions, although some daring buccaneers and corsairs have nonetheless succeeded in establishing commerce with indigenous communities on the coast. Many of these swashbucklers covet the fabled riches of the ancient Kingdom of the Skull, but few who have penetrated its interior have come back to tell the tale…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It’s the dawn of the 19th century, and the recently liberated Republic of Haiti is under attack by its former French overlords, who seek to reconquer the Caribbean nation and force its people back into slavery. In a desperate search for aid, a Haitian voodoo priestess has descended into the island’s bowels, uncovering the fossilized remains of a long-deceased apex predator whom she hopes to resurrect so it can help her people defend their newly won freedom.
It’s a fanciful scenario, I admit, but given that many of the Caribbean islands are thought to have emerged during the Cretaceous Period (including Hispaniola, the island on which stand the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), it seems conceivable to me that some dinosaurs from the North American mainland could have found their way to those islands, depending on well they could swim. As of this writing, it remains to be seen whether we will ever uncover any of their fossils.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I wanted to try my hand out at drawing a reclining woman, and this sunbathing African fisherwoman is what came out of that. I didn’t have a particular culture in mind for her, but I think she could come from almost anywhere along the continent’s shores within the last few thousand years. One thing I do like about drawing characters from the lesser-studied areas of antiquity is that you have a lot more creative license with designing them than you would with, say, the Romans or the Persians.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These are my interpretations of three goddesses that are each associated with hunting and archery. From left to right, they are the Greek Artemis, the Egyptian Neith, and the Norse Skadi. I doubt these goddesses are actually related to one another, but I thought it was a neat coincidence that the three ancient mythologies best known to the modern public happen to all have goddesses that share the bow-hunting theme.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Art vs Artist, 2023 edition!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And this is a labeled version of my "Hunting Goddesses" artwork which I made for printing on T-shirts and other merchandise:
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And these are modern-day versions of the same goddesses. If you’re wondering what sort of material Neith’s jacket is supposed to be made of, it’s supposed to be gold-colored crocodile hide.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my design for an amphibious kaiju (or giant monster) that I created to be the antagonist of an upcoming short story of mine. Originating in the depths of the underworld, it’s actually a supernatural demon that is summoned to terrorize modern Japan and the adjacent coastline, and it’s up to the hunting goddesses Neith, Artemis, and Skadi to slay it. However, they will have more to contend with than just the kaiju itself…
I admit it may not be the most inventive kaiju design out there, as it kinda looks like a piscine version of the Dimetrodon, but it is what came up in my head while I started writing the story. I don’t have an official statistic for its size at hand, but in the story’s opening scene, it does take a mouthful out of a Hayabusa-class patrol boat (the typical length of which is around 164 feet), so you can imagine it’s a fairly large kaiju.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Lucifer, or the Morning Star, once enjoyed prestige as among the most luminous of the immortals, a position he took great pride in. However, he never felt the nurturing affection the other gods showed toward those disgusting, imperfect abominations known as mortals. When he tried to cleanse the Earth of the plague of mortal life by throwing an asteroid into it sixty-six million years ago, the rest of the gods had him apprehended and thrown into the underworld for eternity, all while what remained of life rebounded to reclaim the planet’s surface.
Now Lucifer, as the Lord of Chaos, does what he can to torment the mortals from his subterranean prison, releasing demons to terrorize and smite as many of them as he can. But the three Goddesses of the Hunt, Neith, Artemis, and Skadi have been a thorn in his plans by slaying everything he has released. If Lucifer is to realize his agenda, he must find a way to eliminate those troublesome goddesses once and for all…
Lucifer, although named after one of the Abrahamic devil’s many monikers, is a character I created for a short story I drafted. The story is about the Goddesses of the Hunt going up against a kaiju (giant monster) that Lucifer has unleashed upon modern Japan, all while he is plotting a way to remove them from the picture altogether.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
The Goddesses of the Hunt Neith, Artemis, and Skadi must defend modern Tokyo from a rampaging kaiju (giant monster) that has been unleashed from the underworld. But they must be careful of the green fire building up in the monster’s gullet!
This is an illustration I did for a short story which I recently drafted. If you need to know who’s who, Neith (from Egyptian mythology) is the dark-skinned woman in gold, Artemis (Greek) is the olive-skinned woman in red, and Skadi (Norse) is the blonde in blue.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
150 million years ago in Jurassic North America, an Allosaurus fragilis has wandered too far from the open plains into the shadowy forest, and it has therefore fallen prey to the local apex predator, Torvosaurus tanneri. Goes to show you that just because you’re on the top of the food chain in one habitat doesn’t grant you the same status in another.
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Thumbnail time again! This one has Aboriginal Australian warriors defending their homeland from the marauding Knights Templar.
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The Knights Templar have ventured deep into the bushy wilds of the land down under, ever rapacious in their search for plunder. However, the local Aboriginal community will not tolerate those thieving intruders ransacking their homeland. And so an Aboriginal war party has ambushed the marauders, ready to beat their chain mail-clad bodies into bloody pulps with nulla-nulla clubs and boomerangs!
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Thumbnail time again! This one is inspired by a certain 1930s movie...
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
On a remote island somewhere in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra, the mighty Kong is ready to receive his golden-haired bride!
As a matter of fact, there are some natural blondes among the indigenous dark-skinned peoples of Melanesia and Australia. It appears to have evolved separately from the blond hair in Europeans. As for Kong himself, I based him off an orangutan instead of the traditional gorilla, since it’s orangutans rather than gorillas which are native to the Southeast Asian region.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A valiant defender of the Congo jungles gazes with horror upon one of the vast cobalt mines that thousands upon thousands of her people have been forced to excavate from their homeland for a pittance each, with many having been evicted from their homes or abducted to toil in the mines. And it’s all to supply the Global North’s consumer electronics industry with the cobalt it craves.
I wanted to do a modern take on the archetypal “jungle girl” from pulp literature and comics with this character design, and I also wanted to represent one of the major human rights violations that is taking place in Central Africa on behalf of neo-colonial greed. I think it would be awesome to see a character like this take on the greedy devils exploiting her people!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
He may be a Homo neanderthalensis, and she may be a Homo sapiens from the Aurignacian culture of Europe and western Asia around 40,000 years ago. But they are nonetheless a happy couple, and that’s what matters in the end.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a simple, fun pin-up of an urban African-American beauty in a squatting pose.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Lt. Nyota Uhura of the USS Enterprise is testing out the latest in Federation martial technology, which they call a “lightsaber”. Little does she anticipated how longlasting its legacy will be, and how far, far afield its popularity will spread.
I don’t care if they’re different franchises with different corporate owners, I kinda like the idea that Star Trek and Star Wars take place in the same universe (albeit at different time periods). So this is my way of combining these franchises. Who knows, maybe Paramount and Lucasfilm will get together to do a crossover one of these days…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Having just acquired his sacrificial bride, the mighty Kong must now defend her from the predators of his island domain, not least of which is the terrible giant land crocodile!
This is of course my adaptation of the scene from the classic movie in which King Kong wrestles a tyrannosaur. As much as I love the dinosaurs in both the original movie and the 2005 remake, I always did feel that Kong appeared less impressive compared to them, being simply a giant version of a modern animal. Therefore, I decided to make Kong’s nemesis a giant relative of the extinct terrestrial crocodilian Quinkana, which prowled Australia until around 10,000 years ago.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
12,000 years ago in what will someday become the neighborhood of Encino in Los Angeles, California, a distant ancestor of the local Tongva people must defend himself from hungry dire wolves (Aenocyon dirus)!
This was inspired by a revisiting of the 1992 teen comedy Encino Man, which is about a couple of high school seniors accidentally uncovering a frozen prehistoric man (played by a young Brendan Fraser), thawing him back to life, and teaching him to adapt to modern life. As much as Fraser’s performance is one of the film’s highlights (along with the other characters’ colorful if not always decipherable early 90’s vocabulary), it must be admitted that anyone living in Encino during the Pleistocene would not have looked like him. More likely, they’d be related to local indigenous groups like the Tongva and Chumash.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Sherlock Holmes’s latest mystery has somehow brought him and Watson all the way to a remote region of South America. While Holmes has his magnifying glass out to investigate some footprints the local wildlife left behind, Watson realizes that the architect of said tracks is following them in turn…
This is of course my way of uniting Holmes with his creator’s other famous literary legacy. I know his deerstalker hat and cloak may not be the most practical getup for a tropical climate, but given how definitive it has become of Sherlock’s look, I felt he would be all but unrecognizable without it.
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This is my fan’s interpretation of Velvette from the indie animated series Hazbin Hotel. Her little rap number “Respectless” in the first season’s third episode is among my favorite songs in the series so far!
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It is the year 1851, and the rogue albino sperm whale Moby Dick has been terrorizing the archipelago of Vanuatu in the Melanesian South Pacific. It is up to a local warrior princess and her loyal saltwater crocodile to liberate their waters from that demon of the deep!
If you’re wondering what those little circular marks on Moby Dick’s head are, they are scars left behind by the suckers on the arms of giant squid, which are among sperm whales’ favorite prey.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Aztec jaguar warriors fend off an invading force of Malian cavalry from West Africa deep in the rainforests of Mesoamerica!
This of course never happened as far as we know, but the Malian Mansa (Emperor) Musa did claim that his predecessor, Muhammad ibn Qu, abdicated his throne to lead a fleet of 2,000 ships into the Atlantic Ocean, never to return. This anecdote has invited speculation that Mansa Muhammad and his expedition may have reached the New World, although evidence for such conjecture remains undiscovered as of yet. But if they had, a confrontation like this could totally have taken place afterward!
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This is a female dancer from the Harappan civilization that spread over the Indus Valley in South Asia between 3300 and 1300 BC, being the first urban culture known to develop in the subcontinent. Her jewelry is referenced from a bronze statuette uncovered at the Harappan site of Mohenjo-daro in what is now northern Pakistan, but whereas the original sculpture showed a nude figure, I gave my version a top and loincloth to make it safer for work.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a little Photoshop experiment attempting to recreate the face of Septimius Severus, a Roman emperor of mixed Italian and North African descent who seized control of the Empire circa 193 AD and reigned until his death in 211 AD. I sampled a photograph of former US President Barack Obama for the skin, but then darkened it to better match one of Severus’s painted portraits (credit goes to fellow mod Punos Rey for helping me refine my photomanipulation with his feedback).
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ That's an interesting take.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ That's an interesting take.
Thanks. I actually had a little trouble settling on a complexion for the guy. The Roman painting of him does show him with a somewhat dark complexion, but on the other hand his mother would have been a typical Italian Roman, and then there's that anecdote of him finding an "Aethiopian" soldier handing him a wreath to be an ominous omen because of that soldier's skin color (which would suggest that Severus wasn't super-dark himself). In the end I went with what you might call a darker biracial color for him.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ The Romans like their Etruscan forebears and the Greeks before them like Minoans and Egyptians would paint men with darker complexions. But Septimius' complexion is even darker than the tanned complexion of Roman males which makes me suspect this was done to emphasize his African ancestry. He may have actually been lighter.
Recall Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence that I brought up here. Although part of the Medichi family, his mother was a Moor from North Africa.
Note that while some portraits show him fairer, others show him darker.
Of course it's common for black-white biracial types to become lighter in winter but darker in the summer.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:The Romans like their Etruscan forebears and the Greeks before them like Minoans and Egyptians would paint men with darker complexions. But Septimius' complexion is even darker than the tanned complexion of Roman males which makes me suspect this was done to emphasize his African ancestry. He may have actually been lighter.
That did occur to me as well. However, I was worried that some people might not like it if I made Severus too light as well, given the Roman painting of him.
BTW, I have another, hand-drawn portrait of Severus in the works: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
On a rocky ledge in the Pacific Northwest, the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis attacks a male sasquatch in a contest of feline ferocity against simian strength!
Possibly originating in the legends of indigenous cultures in northwestern North America, the sasquatch has since become immortalized in the region’s folklore as “Bigfoot”. Those who believe the myth might have a grain of truth argue the sasquatch to be a relict descendant of the giant orangutan relative Gigantopithecus. However, seeing as the creature’s most iconic image is that of a bipedal ape, I opted to make my version a hominin related to the African Paranthropus.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Enkidu, a character from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh who is a form of the archetypal “wild man”. He befriends the titular King Gilgamesh of Uruk, with whom he goes on an adventure in a cedar forest. When the two slay the Bull of Heaven sent down by the goddess Inanna/Ishtar, the gods sentence Enkidu to death as punishment. The grief-stricken Gilgamesh searches for the secret of eternal life in the epic’s second half, only to learn that it was never intended for mere mortals like him and his fallen friend. It is infamously a rather tragic story.
Being fond of prehistoric life as I am, I made my Enkidu a late-surviving Neanderthal, but he has picked up a few artifacts of human civilization such as gold bracelets and a copper spearhead. One does wonder if finding the fossil remains of Neanderthals and other pre-sapient hominins might have inspired various myths of humanoid creatures such as “wild men” around the world.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Inspired by the accounts of Sinbad the Sailor’s seven escapades, another Baghdadi by the same name has ventured out into the Indian Ocean in search of the treasures of ancient Lemuria. Before having even landed on the lost continent’s shores, this Sinbad’s already run into trouble with its indigenous wildlife!
The Sinbad you see here is actually the second of two characters named Sinbad in the 1001 Arabian Nights. He is a poor landsman to whom the famous sailor narrates his seven adventures back in Baghdad (then under the rule of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid). One wonders if he might have been inspired by the other Sinbad to strike it rich out on the high seas!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Meet Nemong, a tribal huntress and warrior from the legendary lost continent of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean. She is a character who appears in a short book I recently drafted titled "Sinbad and the Lost Continent", in which a sailor from medieval Baghdad named Sinbad (not the famous one, but another Sinbad inspired by the former's seven voyages) travels to Lemuria in search of ancient riches. It is Nemong who will guide our Sinbad and his crew to the ruins of her people's ancestors (since she understands they need the wealth to alleviate the poverty they experience back home), and she'll also become Sinbad's love interest later on.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a bit different from what I usually do, but the idea came to me in a dream. I wanted to do a simple compass illustration with a cartoon-style animal representing each of the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) as well as the four ordinal directions (northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest). Can you identify all the animals representing each direction?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This illustration shows the climax for my recently drafted short book Sinbad and the Lost Continent. In it, Sinbad (not the famous Sailor, but another Sinbad inspired by the former’s legends) and his expedition, including the fierce and beautiful local warrior Nemong (pictured right), discover the ruins of the ancient Lemurian capital Mu-Lemur, but they must get past the giant idol that guards its fabled treasures. What better way to defeat the idol than to lure one of the Lemurian continent’s fearsome tyrannosaurs into battling it? Who will win…well, I can’t spoil that here!
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The young Prince Taharqa of Kush, fated to become king of an empire that spreads from his homeland in Sudanese Nubia all the way down to the Nile Delta, leads an invasion of southern Spain circa 700 BC. This is of course another alternate history scenario, but the inspiration came from a handful of apocryphal accounts from historians such as Strabo and Ahmed ibn Mohammed al-Makhari that report that he ventured to the “pillars of Heracles” (the Gibraltar Strait between Spain and Morocco) and led an expedition into Spain. Archaeological evidence of such Kushite forays remains undiscovered, but considering that the Phoenicians from Lebanon had already established trading posts on the Spanish coast as far afield as modern Cadiz by that time, an army from the Nile Valley making it there is not totally impossible. Who knows, maybe Taharqa and his soldiers here are defending one of the Phoenician settlements from hostile local tribes?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This ancient Egyptian princess is very fond of her pet vervet monkey, but the poor thing doesn’t seem to be reciprocating her feelings. Not that I blame the little dude. You would probably be unhappy too if you were brought down from your native savanna for some hairless bipedal apes to treat you like a fancy toy.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Miragaia longicollum is a stegosaurid dinosaur that lived in Europe around 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Period. Although smaller than its iconic relative Stegosaurus, weighing little more than 2.2 tons and stretching out to only 21 feet from head to tail, Miragaia stands out within its family for its proportionately long neck. Its genus name refers to the Portuguese parish in which its fossils were found.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrait of Dea Africa, a Roman goddess-like entity who personified the imperial province of Africa (which to them meant the area of Tunisia and the northwestern coast of modern Libya). Roman artists traditionally depicted her wearing a helmet modeled after an African elephant’s head and with braided or dreadlocked hair, but otherwise made her look more Italian than African in accordance with their prevailing beauty ideals. Nonetheless, I wanted my version to look, well, African even without the elephant helmet, with some ritual scarifications and Amazigh-style tattoos to boot.
Dea Africa is unlikely to have been a major deity in the Roman pantheon, but sometimes she was associated with a cornucopia (horn of plenty) to represent fertility, which may refer to Rome’s North African provinces serving as a breadbasket for the Empire.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And now for a different form of creative expression...
Over the past couple of days, I've been working on a mod for the free and open-source real-time strategy game 0 AD: Empires Ascendant that makes the Noba culture (who are based on the Nuba peoples of western Sudan) a fully playable civilization. It is actually a "mod within a mod" as I made it for use alongside the Delenda Est mod (from whence a lot of the assets came). Among the Noba civilization's characteristic units are tribal warriors wielding clubs, spears, and javelins, tame lions, war elephants, and a fierce and beautiful warrior queen who is their civilization's hero unit.
The mod still needs a bit more playtesting and polishing before I can upload it to the interwebs for others' use (and you will need the Delenda Est mod to use it), but it's almost done and I am proud of what I have accomplished so far.
Somewhere among the Nuba Hills in the west of what will someday become Sudan, a local warrior queen mounted atop her trusty elephant steed rallies her troops in preparation for defending their homeland!
This is meant to be a fictional scenario set sometime deep in the ancient past, but it is nonetheless inspired by the various peoples who inhabit the Nuba Hills. Although they are an ethnically diverse bunch, speaking up to forty-two different languages, they are collectively known for their body-painting and wrestling traditions.
By the way, the yellowish tint this picture has is inspired by that of the movie 300.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
What began as simple practice drawing a woman with raised arms became this random dudette from ancient Carthage. Her hairstyle, which I believe is called “twists”, is based on that of a Carthaginian bust on display at the British Museum in London, UK.
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In the hot and humid forests of Eocene North America around 56 million years ago, Uintatherium anceps is having breakfast. Despite its resemblance to modern rhinoceroses, Uintatherium was not related to them but rather belonged to an extinct order of mammals known as the Dinocerata, which lived between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs of the early Cenozoic Era. One 2015 study has suggested a closer relationship between Dinocerata on the one hand and an order of South American hoofed mammals, also extinct, called the Xenungulata.
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While crossing the Alps in 218 BC, the great Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca has stumbled upon the skull of a woolly mammoth half-buried in the snow. Given the difficulty his own animals have experienced in enduring the montane cold, he wonders how elephants could ever be native to these frigid heights deep in Europe.
This is of course a speculative scenario, but woolly mammoth remains have actually been found in the Alps on several occasions, so I think it’s theoretically possible for Hannibal or people in his army to have found some on their trek.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a bit of a digression, but it would be a lot better if I could post artwork I make of ancient North Africans anywhere without all the people going, "Why are they Black?" In some cases those comments are inquiries in good faith rather than racist trolling, but still, it gets tiresome after a while, as does defending my work. I don't know how Black artists with similar subject matter are able to put up with such crap.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Back to art-posting... A Roman legion has found its way through a naturally occuring time portal to the Cretaceous Period, and the local denizens are more than happy (and hungry) to see them!
If you’re wondering why the legionary in the middle of the composition has darker skin than the others, he’s supposed to be Egyptian on his mother’s side, whereas the others are more or less typical Italians.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Our Queens of the Nile Cleopatra and Amanirenas are posing for a selfie! Of course, this isn’t meant to be historically accurate (unless you really believe they had smartphones back in the first century BC).
BTW, I used a website called Zeeob.com to generate the fake Instagram post.
Higher-res version: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my adaptation of the “Rosie the Riveter” poster which represented women’s increased participation in factories, shipyards, and other industrial workplaces during the World War II era. It has since become an icon of the feminist movement, and its message remains timeless.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Meet Homo floridiensis, or “Florida Man”, a hominin species which roamed Florida around a million years ago, early in the Pleistocene epoch. Or would have, were it a real hominin and not something I made up.
Seriously, the infamous phrase “Florida Man” sounds like the nickname of a fake or misidentified hominin specimen which creationists would appropriate to discredit the entire field of paleoanthropology and the theory of evolution.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Couple of thumbnails today:
Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis versus Sierraceratops
Cleopatra & Amanirenas versus Roman soldiers
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In the semitropical forests of Late Cretaceous North America around 70 million years ago, Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis battles the ceratopsian Sierraceratops turneri. T. mcraeensis is a proposed species within the Tyrannosaurus genus based on a specimen from New Mexico’s Hall Lake Formation that may date between 72 and 70 million years ago. Its species name may not be as evocative or catchy as that of T. rex, but the two species seem to have been of similar size and power, so T. mcraeensis deserves some respect too (if it is a valid species after all).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
The Nile Valley queens Cleopatra of Egypt and Amanirenas of Kush are up against the wrath of the Roman legions! Can our heroines fight their way out of this predicament and defeat one the mightiest armies in the first century BC?
This is of course a fictional “alternate history” scenario I did for the sheer fun of it, but I really like the idea of Cleo and Amani teaming up against Rome. One wonders whether Cleopatra’s Egypt might have held up a little longer with more Kushite support…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is the 1800s in an alternate timeline, and the Zulu and the Maori are fighting over the far southern continent of Antarctica and whatever riches might lie underneath its ice sheets!
Giving both the Zulu and Maori attire suitable for the Antarctic cold while still keeping them recognizable as Zulu and Maori presented a bit of a challenge, I will admit. What I went with was wrapping their limbs with local leopard seal fur as well as giving the Zulu leather cloaks called karosses.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is potential cover art I designed for my recently drafted novella "Sinbad and the Lost Continent" (which I am currently in the process of editing). Inspired by the tales of Sinbad the Sailor in the 1001 Arabian Nights, it follows the story of a separate Sinbad identified in those chapters as Sinbad the Landsman, who seeks to replicate his more famous counterpart's success by searching for ancient treasures in the lost continent of Lemuria out in the Indian Ocean. Guided by the fierce and beautiful local warrior Nemong, Sinbad the Landsman and his companions must brave not only the savage holdovers from prehistory that populate the continent's wilds, but also peril lurking within their own ranks.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A friend of mine and fellow paleoartist has had to euthanize his pet parrot “Sunnybird”, so I drew this Deinonychus with the bird’s color scheme as a gift to provide some comfort to him. RIP, little Sunnybird.
Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
Nice
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by mena7: Nice
Thanks!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
After having been brought over from the lost jungle oasis it once called home, a Carcharodontosaurus saharicus has broken out of captivity and is now on the rampage in ancient Egypt. It has made its way to a sunlit courtyard inside one of the temples, where the Egyptian city guards hope to bring its menace to a halt to the best of their ability!
Aficionados of dinosaur cinema might recognize this as being inspired by a scene in the 1969 Ray Harryhausen film The Valley of Gwangi, in which the titular Allosaurus terrorizes a turn-of-the-century Mexican town and ends up in a Catholic cathedral.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of one of the Valkyries from Norse mythology, who would guide the souls of men who died in battle to the god Odin’s hall of Valhalla. I did this as a birthday gift for my big sister Samantha.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Helena Walker, the protagonist of the Ark animated series on Paramount+. Since the character is from Australia, I thought her darker complexion suggested Aboriginal ancestry, so that’s how I chose to portray her, even giving her some face paint to further highlight that heritage. Plus, you have to admit tribal face paint suits the franchise’s wilderness survival theme very well.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: This character would be an Egyptian gladiatrix who fights for the entertainment of Roman audiences. The design isn’t necessarily meant to be all that historically accurate, but given that female gladiators are known from Roman records (albeit not commonly) and that Egypt was among the Roman Empire’s most economically important provinces, the existence of a character like her shouldn’t be beyond possibility.
By the way, I wanted to try out a “cel-shading” approach (like you see in hand-drawn animation) with this piece, which is why the highlights and shaded areas have sharper edges than in most of my other work.
A new redrawing of this character design: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
In the Roman Colosseum, our Egyptian gladiatrix heroine has just delivered a lethal blow to her Germanic opponent! Whichever fighter they’re rooting for, you can see the Roman spectators are loving this!
If you’re wondering what those big leggings the German girl has on, they are supposed to be thick padded cloth which some gladiators would wear on their arms and legs.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Thumbnail sketch for my next illustration. It's a pack of Deinonychus attacking a juvenile Sauroposeidon in Early Cretaceous North America.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my rendition of "Lucy", a female specimen of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis which lived in Africa between 4 and 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch. Like all hominins, Lucy would have been capable of walking upright, but her species's relatively long forelimbs and curved finger bones suggest a superior climbing ability to modern humans that they would have retained from earlier ape ancestors.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These Deinonychus antirrhopus have their hungry eyes on a juvenile Sauroposeidon proteles deep in the forest of North America around 115 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period. If the young sauropod can shake the feathered predators off and reach adulthood, it will become one of the largest dinosaurs of all time, with a length ranging between 89 and 112 feet and a mass of 44 to 66 tons.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is another depiction of mine of the scholar Hypatia of Alexandria, who lived and studied in Roman Egypt until she died in 415 AD. A teacher and scholar of Neoplatonic philosophy who also built scientific instruments such as astrolabes and hydrometers, she became an adviser to the Roman prefect Orestes, whose conflict with the Christian bishop Cyril would ultimately drag her into the early Christian community's crosshairs. Hypatia would face a brutal death at the hands of a Christian mob who had her stripped naked and assaulted with ostraka (possibly meaning either roof tiles or oyster shells), dragged through the streets of Alexandria, and set her remains on fire. Some historians have claimed Hypatia's murder represents the "death of classical antiquity" at the hands of religious fanaticism, but it should be noted that the mob's reason for targeting Hypatia had more to do with her alliance with Orestes, himself a Christian, than anything she had taught as a scholar and philosopher.
We do not know much about Hypatia's background other than that she had a father named Theon, and her physical appearance remains unknown to the best of my knowledge. Although her name is of Greek origin, there are records of indigenous Egyptians assuming Greek names during the Greco-Roman periods, so I believe it is possible that she was of Egyptian (or other African) descent rather than strictly Greek as commonly shown in artistic portrayals.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
What if Gorosaurus, one of the giant dinosaur-based “kaiju” from Toho’s filmography, were added to Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse as a “Titan” alongside Godzilla and King Kong? I think he would make a worthy adversary for either of them!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Be careful, Aussies, for the French might be coming for your Vegemite next!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my redesign for the unmasked Adam from "Hazbin Hotel". Since he's supposed to represent the first human man on Earth, I thought he looked too much like a modern European dude, so I wanted to give him a look more like that of the earliest Homo sapiens (aka modern humans). His features, especially the prominent brow ridges, are based on those of basal Homo sapiens skulls such as the 160-kiloyear-old "Herto Man" specimen from Ethiopia pictured in the lower left corner.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Silesaurus opolensis was an dinosauriform archosaur that lived in Europe during the Late Triassic Period around 220 million years ago. An insect-eater with a body length of around seven and a half feet, Silesaurus has been traditionally considered a member of a sister lineage to dinosaurs proper, but some recent paleontological analyses suggest that it may be a true dinosaur at the base of the ornithischian lineage (the grouping of dinosaurs that includes the duck-billed hadrosaurs, the armored stegosaurs and ankylosaurs, and the horn-faced ceratopsians). Like the ornithischians, Silesaurus appears to have had a beak covering the tip of its lower jaw (or predentary).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Thumbnail time again! Here, we have Cleopatra and Amanirenas fighting Tarzan of the Apes, whom the Romans have forcibly plucked out of his native time via sorcery so they can have him assassinate the two troublesome Queens of the Nile in exchange for sending him home afterward. Can our heroines fend off the ape-man's attacks and then offer him an alternate route to his original time period?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It is 30 BC in an alternate timeline, and the Romans have used a sorcerous rite powered by the time god Saturn to pluck Tarzan of the Apes out of the early 20th century into their own time. They tell the poor ape-man that they will let him return home only on the condition that he assassinate those two troublesome Queens of the Nile, Cleopatra of Egypt and Amanirenas of Kush. Can our two heroines fend off Tarzan’s attacks and then offer him an alternate path to his native time period?
This version of Tarzan, by the way, is my interpretation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original character.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Out in the open waters of the western Pacific Ocean, a saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) attacks a common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). True to their name, saltwater crocodiles do in fact cross the ocean around Southeast Asia and Oceania, and the remains of pelagic fish have been found in their stomachs, so it seems very conceivable to me that they could attack other animals in that part of the sea. Closer to coastal waters, saltwater crocodiles have been observed hunting marine creatures such as sharks, sea turtles, dugongs, and sawfish.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A queen of medieval Mali stands on a balcony overlooking her mudbrick palace’s grounds. I love the Malian style of architecture, but damn, those rows of posts they have sticking out of it can be tedious to draw.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my interpretation of Amanra, the fleet-footed and agile Nubian warrior princess from the real-time strategy game Age of Mythology‘s single-player campaign. Not only was she fierce, courageous, and noble, but she had quite an attractive design (as far as computer-game characters with low-poly models from the early 2000s went). I truly think she is an underrated heroine!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a commissioned piece I did for a follower on DeviantArt who wanted me to draw an Afro-British superheroine of their design. The character is supposed to have the power to transform into a were-leopard as well as possessing other leopard-related powers. In all honesty, I feel that the orange costume in the reference images my commissioner sent me looks a bit too much like Vixen from DC Comics, and a yellow suit would better suit a leopard-themed character anyway, but I didn’t want to stray too far from the character’s established design either.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Wanted to do a throwback to this 2019 piece of mine today...
This is my depiction of a little-known personage from the annals of imperial Chinese history, namely a woman named Li who was the mother of the Emperor Xiao Wuwen (373-397 AD, during the Jin Dynasty). According to the official chronicle “History of the Jin”, Li got her start as a concubine and and weaver whose colleagues had showered her with abuse for her being “tall and black” as well as a “kunlun” (the Chinese word for darker-skinned foreigners). Thankfully, this would ultimately play out like a classic Cinderella story for Li, since she found herself nominated as Empress (as in imperial consort) out of all the concubines.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure what Li’s ethnic heritage would have been, assuming she was a real person to begin with. The Chinese often used the word “kunlun” for African people, but in other cases it could apply to Negrito, Indian, or even “Mongoloid” Southeast Asians (e.g. Cambodians, Vietnamese, or Malays). Since none of those other ethnic groups are known for having distinctly tall stature like Li, however, I chose to go with an African interpretation for my portrayal of her.
By the way, the phrase Li is saying is supposed to be Mandarin Chinese for “Haters gonna hate!” Go show those catty concubines, my Empress!
Sources: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Gonna do another throwback for Mother's Day this year! It's my 2022 piece "The Mother and Child Across Time and Space".
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is a head portrait of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, a proposed earlier cousin of T. rex thought to have hunted in the American Southwest around 72-70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous. For the most part, T. mcraeensis would have resembled its later and more famous relative, even reaching a similar size, but a shallower lower jaw suggests its bite might not have been quite as powerful as that of T. rex (although, make no mistake, it would have still ranked among the most powerful of any terrestrial carnivore known to science).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Gave her some color: Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These two represent a couple of basal Homo sapiens from Africa anywhere between 300,000 and 70,000 years ago, before our species dispersed out of the continent and throughout the rest of the world. I based their facial features off those of specimens like Jebel Irhoud, Omo Kibish, and Herto Man, although their influence may be more apparent in the man here since male humans tend to have more prominent brow ridges than females in any population.
Unlike some of my previous drawings of early modern humans, I wanted to give these ones less ragged clothing with some designs painted on them, analogous to the designs some later Aboriginal Australians would paint on their loincloths.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Two thumbnails tonight. First is Astorgosuchus attacking Paraceratherium in Oligocene Asia, and the second is a Paleolithic huntress with her pet Megantereon in Pleistocene Africa. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A Paleolithic huntress in Pleistocene Africa is showing some affection to her tame saber-toothed Megantereon. Humans may never have been able to fully domesticate any saber-toothed cats as far as we know, but I can still see some adopting cubs and raising them to be hunting companions. It would be like how people have trained lions and tigers to perform tricks in historical circuses.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
25 million years ago in Asia during the Oligocene Epoch, the crocodilian Astorgosuchus bugtiensis attacks a juvenile specimen of the giant hornless rhinoceros Paraceratherium bugtiensis.
Astorgosuchus was a close relative of true crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) that is estimated to have grown up to 26 feet long, making it a bit longer than the largest saltwater crocodiles today. There are memes going around the Internet claiming even larger sizes nearing 30 feet in length, but a paleontologist buddy of mine who specializes in reptiles tells me these are likely exaggerated. Goes to show you once again that you can’t trust everything you read on social media.
That being said, we have found juvenile Paraceratherium bones with crocodilian tooth marks, and it’s possible a predatory Astorgosuchus left them behind.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my rendition of one of a fictional race of sapient fish called the "Deep Ones" that appear in H.P. Lovecraft's novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". In that story, the Deep Ones offer a small New England coastal town wealth in both jewelry and fish in exchange for the right to interbreed with its citizens, thereby conferring onto them their immortality and ability to live underwater. The results of this inter-species admixture is portrayed as a subject of horror for the narrating protagonist, which is of course in keeping with Lovecraft's unfortunately of-his-time views on "miscegenation". For my money, however, the Deep Ones in his story don't seem so bad as long as their relationships with the humans is strictly consensual.
I actually have recently drafted a short story featuring these creatures, but my version of them is much more malevolent toward humanity than Lovecraft's, abducting them for sacrifice to the "Great Old Ones" they venerate. The story is a simple tale about a Paleolithic African woman and her tame saber-toothed cat fending off a Deep One raid, with both already having a bad history with the creatures.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
And here's the illustration I did for the aforementioned short story! Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Some sketchbook doodles I did on a family trip to Colorado...
Ancestral Puebloans, the Native American peoples responsible for the structures at Mesa Verde.
A classic Evanescence song from my teenage years inspired this Egyptian mummy doodle.
Native American and Polynesian warrior fighting.
Prowling T. rex.
Velvette from Hazbin Hotel in her swimwear.
The stupid shit I see people post on the Internet way too often inspired this one.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Gave my cartoon about "willfully moronic" people some color.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is gift art I did for my fellow artist Jonathan Price (aka “Dualmask”), featuring a martial-artist character of his design named Binah. I have to say it can be fun drawing other people’s characters in my own style!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
These are Vilimaini and Aisake, two characters I created for my earlier artwork “Dueling the Demon of the Deep” in which they fight the white sperm whale Moby Dick. Vilimaini is the niece of her community’s “big man” on a Melanesian island near Vanuatu, and Aisake is a tame saltwater crocodile she has raised up from the egg.
Melanesians, by the way, are a group of people who don’t seem to get that much love in fictional media. Even the Polynesians, who are later migrants to Oceania from Taiwan by way of Southeast Asia, get more media attention than the Melanesian peoples for some reason. I think that’s quite a shame, and I suspect there’s a racist reason for that disparity since Melanesians have retained darker skin and more tightly coiled hair than Polynesians (hence why they’ve historically been racialized as “Black” despite being more closely related at the genetic level to Asian than African peoples).
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
^^ I remember nine years ago a movie from the island Tanna, in the island state of Vanuatu, got rather popular and written about in media. It was a beautiful and moving tale about love versus old traditions.
Otherwise, as you said one rarely hear about Melanesia in mainstream media
quote:Tanna is a 2015 Australian-Ni-Vanuatu film set on the island of Tanna in the South Pacific, depicting the true story of a couple who decided to marry for love, rather than obey their parents' wishes. Starring Marie Wawa and Mungau Dain, the film is based on an actual marriage dispute.
Tanna was the first film to be shot entirely on location in Vanuatu. The film won the Audience Award Pietro Barzisa at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival. It was selected as the Australian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards, and was nominated for the award in January 2017, the first time Australia's submission received a nomination.
Poster to the film Tanna Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
^ I'm not normally into serious drama movies, but I might check out that Tanna movie for its anthropological value.
Anyway...
This is my portrait of a man representing the Western Hunter-Gatherers, a population of hunter-gatherers that occupied western Europe between the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago and the arrival of agriculture 5,000 years ago. Genetic evidence recovered from their remains suggest that, while these people often sported blue eyes, they appear to lack the genetic alleles for lighter skin that are now ubiquitous in Europe, western Asia, and the Mediterranean basin, suggesting that they retained the darker skin tones of the earliest humans who evolved in Africa. Of course, it’s theoretically possible that the Western Hunter-Gatherers had evolved their own set of skin-lightening alleles separate from that of modern Europeans, but no evidence of such convergent evolution has been found yet, so I went with a darker skin tone for my depiction.
That being said, some hunter-gatherer populations who lived at the same time further east in Europe, known as the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers, do appear to have had the alleles for lighter skin of modern Europeans, and it’s likely that these alleles originated in the very far north of Eurasia during the Pleistocene among a third population of people known as the Ancient North Eurasians. At any rate, the hunter-gatherer populations of Europe would find themselves absorbed by immigrating farmers of Anatolian origin who appear to have had Mediterranean pigmentation, thus initiating the Neolithic in Europe. These farmers in turn would absorb nomadic herdsmen from the steppes of western Eurasia who would bring Indo-European languages to the region, and this mixture would produce the modern European populations.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my portrayal of an ancient Egyptian archer. In the Egyptian military, archers could be indigenous Egyptians (aka Kemetians) like this gentleman here or mercenaries hired from the “Land of the Bow” (or what we now call Nubia) further up the Nile. In either case, their bows would have been what are called self bows, or bows made from one piece of wood, before the Hyksos brought in the composite bow (made from multiple pieces of wood) when they invaded northern Egypt from the Middle East around 1700 BC.
The white diagonal straps over this Egyptian archer’s body are referenced from an Old Kingdom tomb relief that probably came from the Giza area, and his basket-like quiver is based on one from the Middle Kingdom uncovered at the site of Deir el-Bahri near modern Luxor. In retrospect, the arrow came out longer than I intended, but I suppose really long arrows could have always existed.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
An article in LiveScience by Stacy Keltner suggests that australopithecines like the iconic “Lucy” may not have had a thick chimpanzee-like covering of hair as traditionally depicted, but instead may have already evolved the thinner (or “naked”) coat which we humans have inherited. She bases this on studies of human lice which suggest that our hair had already begun to thin 3-4 million years ago, or a little before Lucy’s time. Therefore, I wanted to see what Lucy would look like with a more human-like pattern of hair.
By the way, it’s such a shame that drawing female hominins from the pre-clothing era has the effect of making the artwork “not safe for work”, therefore limiting the places where I can share it.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This adventuress was about to investigate some ancient cliff dwellings in a desert canyon when she chanced upon a prowling fin-backed pelycosaur. Will she be able to fend the carnivorous synapsid off with her trusty blade?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Akhenhotep, a priest from the riverside kingdom of Hekaptah, has hired the vagabond Amozean sellsword Ezegbe to retrieve an ancient mask with sorcerous power from some abandoned cliff dwellings out in the desert. Now that Ezegbe has brought the mask back to Akhenhotep within the ruins of a temple his ancestor had commissioned, the priests explains what he plans to do with his power…much to the warrior from Amozey’s horror.
This illustration is a follow-up to my earlier “Canyon Confrontation” piece. They both depict scenes from a short “sword & sorcery story” I have written called “Mask of the Cliff-Dwellers” (which awaits review and revision now).
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Before any of our ancestors ever encountered the woolly mammoths of the Pleistocene far north, the earliest humans would have whetted their hunting skills on the mighty elephants and other great beasts of their African cradle. Indeed, it’s a common hypothesis that the wildlife of African evolving alongside humankind for the longest period allowed them to endure human pressure far better than large animals elsewhere in the world, hence why much of the megafauna in Africa is still around to this day. And we as humanity today must preserve them the best we can.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Forty millennia ago, a huntress representing the Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian culture crouches on a ledge overlooking the chilly European steppes where megafauna such as woolly mammoths and rhinoceros roam. In her grip is a spear with a bone point that has been hafted to the shaft with birch tar glue. She might be scouting for game on behalf of her hunting party, or she might be calculating which animals they will single out for an attack!
If you’re wondering why she has blue eyes, a paper published in Experimental Dermatology in 2020 reported that, although the West Eurasian genetic alleles for lighter skin would have emerged no earlier than 28-22,000 years ago (and even then would have been restricted to the far east and north of Europe until much later), blue eyes might have emerged earlier, possibly dating back to 42,000 years ago. This would mean that many Upper Paleolithic Europeans would have had both dark skin and blue eyes, a combination of traits that remained widespread in western Europe before the arrival of Neolithic farmers from the region of Turkey around 8-5,000 years ago.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Having a cave lion (Panthera spelaea) attack you and your partner while you two are tracking down a gravelly ravine in Ice Age Europe may not be most people’s idea of a romantic outing, but at least this Neanderthal/human couple has an experience to bond over as they fend off the big cat. And lucky for our heroes that it’s only one bachelor male lion this time, as a whole pride of these fierce felines would be a lot for two hominin hunters to handle!
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I’ve had a couple of small, poseable artist’s mannequins for a few years now. Out of a desire to experiment with a different form of creative expression from my usual, I decided to give them both coats of paint to make them look more human-like (by default they are gray). Afterward, with the help of modeling clay, toothpicks, and a sheet of bristol paper, I turned the male mannequin into an ancient Egyptian spearman (inspired by the painted wooden models from the tomb of Mesehti) and his female counterpart into a prehistoric huntress.
I admit that I was quite clumsy with both the clay and the paint job, but I’m nonetheless glad to have breathed more life into these mannequins.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I made this Cretaceous diorama using an old shoebox, a printed copy of one of my jungle artworks, some brown modeling clay with green paint applied to the top, various plastic palm trees and plants, and a couple of my old toy dinosaurs.
The Papo dinosaur toy line these figures come from is interesting because they started out with designs faithfully adapting the Jurassic Park style (as you can see in their classic T. rex and Triceratops models), but then moved on to somewhat more accurate depictions of the animals’ anatomy. Still, they’ve always been gorgeous, even if photos of them have long been overused as stock images of dinosaurs.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
66 million years ago in Late Cretaceous North America, a herd of Kritosaurus navajovius gather around a salt lick in a jungle clearing. Licking minerals from the clay here provides these hadrosaurid dinosaurs with essential nutrients such as sodium, calcium, and zinc which helps with the animals’ physical growth. It’s a behavior many animals throughout the world carry out to this day.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Exactly when prehistoric humans invented the bow and arrow remains shrouded in uncertainty, but the oldest uncovered arrowheads have been found in what is now South Africa and are dated to approximately 70,000 years ago. Outside of Africa, stone arrowheads of Paleolithic age have also been found at Grotte Mandrin in France (where they are dated to around 54,000 years ago) and the Fa Hien Cave in Sri Lanka (48,000 years old), as well as the pieces of a bow found at Mannheim-Vogelstang in Germany (18,000 years old). So while we may not consider bows and arrows to be as iconic a weapon for “cavemen” as spears or clubs, they do in fact go back quite far in our prehistory.
By the way, I used a public-domain photo of rhinoceros paintings from the Chauvet Cave in France for the background.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A buddy of mine has been making riggable sprites out of his characters for use in video games he develops single-handedly. I wanted to emulate his process by adapting one of my own action heroines into that. The artistic side of the process is done, but now I have to rig the character in Dragon Bones Pro.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Earlier this year, I drafted a novella titled Sinbad and the Lost Continent that was inspired by the Arabian Nights. The protagonist is not the famous Sinbad the Sailor but another character of the same name whom he inspires to embark on an epic voyage to the lost continent of Lemuria in search of ancient treasure. Anyway, enjoy this trailer for it while I prepare the book for publication on Amazon:
quote:This is the tale of Sinbad ibn Hassan, a poor porter in medieval Baghdad who, after hearing about the seven voyages of his more famous counterpart of the same name, sets out in search of treasure in the lost continent of Lemuria. There, along with his best friend Kishore, their cunning navigator Omar, and the fierce and beautiful native princess Nemong, will brave the Mesozoic monsters that call the continent’s jungles home. But dinosaurs and other wildlife are not the only peril they must face together on their quest for Lemuria’s ancient riches…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
This is my reconstruction of a Bronze Age Kushite spearman from the period between 1750-1550 BC, when the capital of Kush was located at the site of Kerma near the Third Cataract of the Nile (“cataract” being a stretch of rapids). Modern artistic portrayals of Kushite soldiery from this era often show them with leopard-skin loincloths, but it appears that cowhide or leather was the more usual material, although some Kushites also wore linen loincloths like the Egyptians further downriver. The Kushites are also known to have attached beadwork to their clothes during this period. The Kerma period of Kushite history would end with the New Kingdom Egyptian conquest after 1550 BC, but the Kushites would win back their independence with a second capital at Napata further up the Nile around 780 BC.
I admit to having had a difficult time looking up what the beadwork for a Kushite loincloth would have looked like, so I did two takes, with the second (below) having the lines of beads arranged in a net-like pattern. Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
A daring young Egyptian prince must defeat a fire-breathing denwen serpent that has been terrorizing his subjects. His bronze shield is his best protection against the monster’s flaming exhalations, but will it be enough?
Although Nile Valley cultures did not regard snakes as always evil as the Abrahamic faiths of the Middle East would, there were still some malevolent serpents in their mythology. The most infamous of these was Apep, the representative of chaos who battled the sun god Ra every night, but another was the fiery denwen that the Egyptian Pyramid Texts mention as having come close to wiping out all the gods before the Pharaoh defeated it. One wonders if that story would eventually influence later myths of fire-breathing dragons…
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Hey dudes, dudettes, and non-binary peeps,
I'm going to close this thread since it seems that bandwidth has become a scarce resource for the forum recently. It sucks, because I really like sharing my work here, but it's a sacrifice I might have to make to keep the forum up.
You can catch up with my work if you check out any of the social media links listed here:
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This is a penciled portrait of Yutyrannus huali, a large proceratosaurid dinosaur which hunted in northeastern Asia around 125 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period. I wanted my portrayal of the animal to have a snow leopard-like appearance here, since it and other dinosaurs of the Jehol Biota appear to have lived in an alpine environment with a relatively cool climate (cool, in the context of the Mesozoic Era, being what we would call temperate today).
Somewhere in the eastern Sahara around 16,000 years ago, these two hunters scouting the dunes for wild game. The language they speak is Proto-Afrasan (or Proto-Afroasiatic), and it will give rise to an entire phylum of languages spoken across northern and eastern Africa as well as southwestern Eurasia. Examples of Afrasan languages include ancient Egyptian, Sudanese Beja, Somali, most of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, and the Berber and Semitic families (the latter of these having entered Asia sometime before 3750 BC).
