JELLYFISH-LIKE CREATURE (FEMALE)

JELLYFISH-LIKE CREATURE (FEMALE)

"She was a creature somewhat like Okwu, jellyfish-like and the size of a storage shed, except her dome was a deep shade of black and she had antennae at the center with a large yellow eye."

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home

TUNGWA

TUNGWA

"'Tungwas are just things that dwell in Leopard Knocks,' Orlu explained. 'Floating bags of teeth, bone, meat, and hair. They explode when they're ready.'"

Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch

"Round and large as a basketball, its thin brown skin grazed the tip of a flower."

Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Warrior

News...

I know it's been a while since I posted new monsters but this coming Monday I'll be posting two weeks worth of new creatures inspired by the work of one of my favorite contemporary authors, Nnedi Okorafor! 

Her Binti series, a space opera rooted in a futuristic Africa, got me hooked and since then I've read Who Fears Death (which is currently being developed into an HBO series produced by George R. R. Martin) and it's prequel The Book Of Phoenix, Lagoon (a parable about environemental and societal corruption) and the Akata Witch series (imagine Earthsea but set in an alternative modern day Nigeria). 

The Binti series is a shining example of fiction that makes me work on this blog. Reading it, I had to draw the beautiful, bizarre and alien creatures described in it. As I was reading I was tracing the lines of the Meduse in my head, working out how the jellyfish-people differ and imagining the colors of the ntu-ntu bugs. If her writing wasn't so compelling I'd have put the book down right then and there and started to draw. But her writing is compelling. It's down to earth while being set on Mars. It's got big picture issues told through the lens of a personal experience. I love her work so much and hopefully I'll inspire some of you to read her stories if you haven't already. 

NEWS!!!

Hey everyone! I know this February was filled with monsters but I had to take a break from March until now. Mostly because I was working out the details of a very exciting upcoming project. I was keeping quiet about it but now I can announce...

Lethe Press will be publishing three books of monsters that I've illustrated! Lethe Press has  been a stellar publisher of weird/horror fiction having released Tom Cardamone's Pumpkin Teeth, Anya Martin's Sleeping With the Monster, Livia Llewellyn's Engines Of Desire and T.E. Grau's The Nameless Dark.

The first book will focus on creatures from world mythology and folklore, tentatively titled "Monstrous Mythology: Illustro Obscurum I" we're aiming for a release by the end of this year! Here's a quote from the Lethe press release: 

"The ancient myths bears their fangs in this illustrated book by artist Michael Bukowski. As a child, the artist read the works of H.P. Lovecraft and discovered how that weird fiction author name-dropped a veritable who's who of gods and creatures from ancient folklore. Before long, Bukowski began sketching how he imagined Apollo and Circe as frightening entities."

"Paperback, 96 pages, featuring full-color art throughout!"

So for those of you who haven't been able to grab one of the extremely limited hand made zines, I'll finally have a mass market version available. You should also expect some gods/creatures never before available and some reworked or completely redrawn monsters!

I'm extremely excited about working with editor Steve Berman and Lethe Press! Keep checking in here or on Seventh Church Ministries or Lethe Press for updates!