"For they were not men at all, or even approximately men, but great greyish-white slippery things which could expand and contract at will, and whose principal shape - though it often changed - was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague snout."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath
Old on the left, new on the right
In my initial run of 20 Lovecraftian monsters back in '08, I really played fast and loose with my interpretations, ignoring some aspects, exaggerating others, manufacturing others out of whole cloth. Most of these I've revisited and paid more attention to the actual source material text. However, my moon-beast is one I've loved from the jump. I've refined the linework, color and rendering but the basic design has stayed the same. Possibly because HPL's description is relatively vague. Now, Lovecraft specifically says they have no eyes, but my design suggests they do, but they're usually hidden in the "blunt south" of tendrils, surrounding a ring of tentacles that in and of itself conceals a tongue & beaked mouth. A little bit of a cheat but I don't mind.
As I was saying, my mooniest is a bit off the beaten path. The canonical design is more like a toad with a starfish head. While it wasn't for Dream-Quest, Virgil Finlay's illustration for The Black Stone Statue in Weird Tales is pretty close to how most illustrators depict a moonbeast.
Other examples include Tom Sullivan's illustration from Petersen's Field Guide To Cthulhu Monsters and the illustration from the Call Of Cthulhu RPG rulebook (again, hard to attribute illustrators for this one).
Tomorrow will be one of the Lovecraftian monsters I've struggled with the most but am most happy with now!
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