Character Design

From the Earth, life is created, nurtured, and dissolved. This planet is all most of us will come to know, our home and our entire world. Within the cycle of life, each individual finds his place in the ecosystem. Grasses are grown and thus eaten by herbivores that later feed carnivores. Water falls from the sky to feed the oceans and lakes, only to be evaporated back into the clouds. One being feeds another. Every death leads to a birth.

As organisms find their lives coming to an end and lie amongst the Earth to rest for their final moments, their very life is absorbed by the ground beneath them. The soul which they traveled the lands with is returned to whence it came and the debt is repaid. Nutrients seep into the foliage, meat feeds the hungry, and even the bones are fed upon by scavengers. Nothing goes to waste as the body returns to the Earth.

These portraits express the natural lives of wildlife, illustrated with the Earth’s given materials. Each value has been carefully constructed with grains of charcoal upon the fibers of paper, harvested from the trees that once reached to the skies. Amongst these soft illustrations, mineral dust creates faint gradients and harsh shadows, as carefully placed highlights capture the glimpse of life. These achromatic drawings intend to capture the living beings found amongst our planet using the most natural of media, allowing this art to embody the Earth and its natural gifts.