🍂 It's officially Autumn! 🍂 Quote repost with your Autumn themed #art *NO A/I #monthofmonsters

From Beyond Month of Monsters 5 #horrorart #darkart #monsters #monthofmonsters

From the Deep An older piece for Month of Monsters 2, 2021. #darkart #horrorart #gore #monsters #monthofmonsters

Flesheater Month of Monsters 5 #horrorart #darkart #horror #monsters #monthofmonsters

A double feature, from September through October. Everyone’s welcome to join!

Zan, Tunnelweb Explorer New card revealed for Magic the Gathering's Through the Omenpaths release! AD Deborah Garcia Copyright Wizards of the Coast, 2025.

Blood Beast Month of Monsters 5 #Monsters #Horror #Gore #MonthofMonsters5

The icon, the artist, the art 👹

Meat #Monsters #Horror #Gore #MonthofMonsters5

If you see this, post a vampire!

So: Going forward, I’m going to start adding hashtags to my work, including to note disturbing content like graphic gore. Anyone who doesn’t want to see such things is strongly advised to mute associated words.

A bit of practice, getting ahead! Thinking of uncanny gore props from older horror films here.

Carcass Eater Month of Monsters 4

VALGAVOTH

MONSTERS

Monster Mayhem! A few movie monsters for an (admittedly short lived) art series in May.

In the wake of all the lazy, soulless logo redesigns, valuing sterile simplicity over character, now I want to see logo redesigns that are just brazenly overzealous clusterfucks, like the logo equivalent to Devastator in Transformers.

A last point I’ll make on the subject: Specifically for the next couple months, things might be getting pretty grisly in this portfolio. Anyone who finds graphic gore or other mature content disturbing may want to mute me for that period of time, as I likely won’t be pre-filtering it.

So, a consideration I made about my last (now deleted) post: Some of the artwork I make is quite graphic, certainly my horror artwork, and I generally don’t put up mature content warnings because I forget that that sort of content can be genuinely upsetting. I’ll be more careful.

I’ve been looking back on Month of Monsters a bit lately, thinking about my process and influences with those images, going from flashlit atmosphere and gritty texture to vivid color and a pulpier aesthetic before proceeding to bounce between. It’s an interesting sort of gradual change.

Thigh and Drumstick Colorization practice on pencil.

Bionicle! Couple rough plans for the look of a “reboot” Toa set I was designing for fun early last year. Maybe someday I’ll return to this— the idea was that each Toa could have several different armor and weapon sets.

Marine Man. Newly digitally colored version of a drawing I made for Month of Monsters 4 in 2023.

Thinking back on Month of Monsters today: The first year in 2020 was the only where the much of the artwork wasn’t fully digital. Many of those pieces started as rough pencil sketches.

The Offering My last image (so far) for my artbook, Monsters. My plan is to do some test images this year before resuming work on the book next year.

Spring Break Sucks First Draft illustration for Monsters.

In the basement… This week, I’m going to release the remaining pieces I’ve done so far for my artbook, Monsters. I’m revamping how I work in general, with the plan for the results of that reboot necessitating me restarting the book’s portfolio. Essentially, I’ll be starting over next year.

Fish (approx)

More scalework into old drawings. I think this has been part of my dissatisfaction lately— I can’t dig deep into fine details like this when I’m on an ultimately pointless timer.

Scalework

Procreate practice

Drop some puppets!

Penciling

If you see this, post a vampire!

Harvest Night One more preview image for my artbook, Monsters.

Ghost! Another page preview for my artbook, Monsters.

Zombies. New preview page for my artbook, Monsters. Another tomorrow!

Grey colored pencil doodles:

Apparently it’s #portfolioday again. I’m John! I’m an illustrator and concept artist who’s worked for Wizards of the Coast, Centipede Press, Draco Gaming, Mondo, and more!

Magic Cards!

Spectral longsword SSD

Spider Dragon Getting ready for Smaugust

Little illustration of how I think of Hierarchy of Detail in my subjects, going from base forms (A) to primary details (B) into secondary details (C).

Dragon Busts

A page with a familiar face from 3DTotal’s new book, Designing Dragons, which features a few of my older pieces!

A bunch of artist proofs, including some outgoing ones!

From figure sculpting to figure collecting, a cool new addition to my collection: Mondo’s Pulgasauri!

Progress shots of my Planet of Dinosaurs and Crater Lake Monster 12” figures, early on in their sculpts. B-Grade is a long held ambition of mine: collectible figures based on horror and monster movies that usually don’t get collectibles.

Detail from a piece for Month of Monsters 2 (2021), from a period where I was painting a lot of vivid gore. I’m sure that wasn’t distressing at all.

Then it’s killed. Not much else to say about it.