Homo Ferus | The Earth Mother

4th Image for the Homo Ferus Series- many more in the future. As always, I'm trying to push the atmosphere in my work. Keep that cell shading while adding some painterly aspects in there as well. I'm a man without a country- in love with graphic and bold- but at the same time, in love with foggy and blurry. Something that just flat colors can't quite capture. Short post today. Working on a few projects at the moment- some of them will hopefully make their appearance here soon.

Homo Ferus | Cracked Sky

Hope all is well with everyone. Especially after the hurricane for those on the east coast. Fortunately, I've been busy with a good amount of freelance work lately. Unfortunately, I can't show any of it to you. Yet. All in good time.

In the mean time, here is the new Homo Ferus. And one of many more to come, I might add. Every time I finish one, I think of three more to draw. Trying to concentrate on the essentials of survival, hunger and food for the first two, I now wanted to approach shelter and exposure to the elements.

I've been considering posting some detail shots everyonce and a while. Maybe I'll do it for this one. We'll see.

Linework

It's got to that point where I've begun to describe the series to other people and even with only three pieces finished, this boy is certainly growing as a character for me. While only those three are done, I have his entire story, perhaps even life, planned out.

Thumbs/Sketches

And yet at the same time, I haven't given him a name. To be honest, I'm somewhat against it. I only refer to him as "Boy" or "The Child." Even in the original photoshop files. He's never had a name and frankly, doesn't even know what a name is. Doesn't matter to him so why should it matter to me.

In addition to that, I don't want to give him the personality that comes with the name. Because of my initial argument, there is still something missing in him that would bring him to that point. The point where he's completely human. There's no developed thought present in that head of his. And that reminder is a bit unnerving.

Homo Ferus | Strength in Numbers

Better quality version: http://www.johnnydombrowski.com/illustration/homo-ferus--strength-in-numbers/

Just finished this tonight. With the amount of feedback I've received for the first Homo Ferus, the urge and pressure was on to continue the series. I've been going through a long dry spell so it feels good to break out of it. Sketch: About 6 1/2 x 9 inches.
One part of my work that I don't tend to show you is all of the tracing paper I go through. While I'm working on a piece, if I have the slightest bit of doubt of how I should draw something, I'll always sketch it out over the drawing. Before having him jump on the back of the elk, I originally drew him running behind- which you can see in the initial sketch. Along with a few drawings to get his hand right, you can see what the original pose looked like.Above: Original pose for the boy around a few wolves. Below: A few variations of his hand with the final version on the bottom.
Coloring it was also a challenge. Unlike the first, I had no idea what time of day I wanted to set it in. With a few ideas in mind, a dense fog quickly became the winner. I'm already working on sketches for another idea. I'm going to step away from Homo Ferus for a bit but he'll be back. Also, I may be working on a short comic soon but I'll keep you posted on that later. All the best.Inked line work: Around 18 x 24 inches.

Homo Ferus | Desperation

As always-for a better quality image- view the piece of my website:
http://johnnydombrowski.com/illustration/homo-ferus--desperation/

I'm back from the dead! Here's a piece I just finished tonight. It'll hopefully be the first of a series following feral children. Children who grow up in the wild or in complete isolation from any form of social contact with other humans. Homo Ferus was a term coined by Carl Von Linné (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) which places the feral child in a stage between animal and man. Not quite either. What makes us man? Is Nurture really that much more important than Nature? It seems like it, yeah. There have been cases of children being locked in a single room for years at a time to the more legendary examples of kids actually being raised by wolves. These children would tend to walk on all fours and even bark and act like dogs.
During the sketch stage, I wanted the first image to put the child alone fighting against the elements, and in this case, hunger. With no options or knowledge for another way out, he resorts to desperate grabbing of fish in a nearby river. I stayed pretty faithful to the sketch with the hair being the one exception. As the idea developed, I wanted the boy's face covered up in this, and most likely, in every illustration from the series. Since we relate to someone the easiest through their eyes or face, I wanted to take that safety net away from the viewer and portray him as, in a way, just another beast in the wild. That's when Ian Laser Higginbotham, a friend and fellow artist, mentioned the idea of having his hair soaking wet and dripping over his face. Perfect! After the ink drawing was done, I colored it digitally in photoshop as usual.I'll keep in touch- more where this came from. Let me know what you think! Talk to you later.
-Johnny