I'll be at ConnectiComix in Cheshire, CT this Sunday, August 9th! 🎉

Abby Denson@abbydenson.bsky.social · 2w ago

CT friends: Come on out for ConnectiComix Art Festival! Sunday August 9th! FREE! 12PM-5PM: Comics and Zine Market 5PM: Music and Live Painting by @pocketvinyl.bsky.social Graphic novels! Zines! Art activities for kids! Counter Weight Brewing Co. 7 Diana Court Cheshire CT, 06410

After 8 children's graphic novels, I decided to switch things up! My next two books have finally been announced: VREELAND, a memoir from HarperAlley and MONUMENTAL, a magical queer YA romance from Knopf BFYR! There's much more to say about both books, but I'm excited to finally share this news!

I'll be at Comic Arts Maine Portland this year! It's a free, one-day comics show in Portland, Maine on April 11, 2026! I'll have all my children's books, and I'll be doing a reading and draw-along! Find me at table 16B! www.comicartsmaineportland.com

My DnD players recently met a sinister spymaster known as The Shadow Marshal...AND they met his mousling assistant Nibberly who happily betrayed his master! 🤣 There were also steampunk mechs involved, and a tabaxi resistance fighter.

My DnD campaign has admittedly gotten a little weird. The players recently fought aboard a steampunk-y zeppelin, and this was its crew! Spoiler: they were all disintegrated when the players set off the arcane warhead the airship had been carrying! 😱

Some more character designs for NPCs from my DnD campaign!! I had an absolute blast with all of them. As you can probably tell, the story is going in some pretty wild and wacky directions. 😅

One of the trickiest character designs for my DnD campaign has been for the elemental giant of gravity, Moon! I wanted her to be extremely eerie, with numerous floating limbs and a distinctly arachnid flavor.

In my DnD campaign, the entire continent of Zumara is run by several different elemental giants, and these guys serve Cinder, the Fire Giant. Their society is super militaristic, but I still wanted to bring in a bit of silliness with their designs!

Bullywugs! I love these little DnD creatures so much, but by the time I introduced them into my campaign, my players were too strong for the basic versions of these guys. So I added in some bigger, badder variants to spice things up!

One of my favorite DnD character designs is Tempest, the elemental giant of water. I wanted to capture her fierceness, armored up with coral and shells. Plus, introducing her allowed me to bring Bullywugs into the mix, and I love my little frog guys!

Early on in my DnD campaign, the players encountered a scary hill giant and mostly managed to avoid her. But when she came back as an undead servant of necromancers, they weren't so lucky! I had a lot of fun using china markers for textures in this piece.

I love the wild directions you can go in with DnD character designs!! This is Cinder, an elemental giant of fire. He wears massive, metal armor, and he has an enormous lion's mane of fire. Because why not??

One of my favorite DnD designs is for Mother Mplop, matriarch of a small coastal village of snailfolk, Shellstack Cove. She was originally going to be a noncombatant, but she ended up dramatically killing the enemy leader with a very well timed magic missile! 🤣

Some more NPC designs for my DnD campaign! The first two guys work for the Undying Empire, my necromantic nation, and then the final guy is an injured druid who's been guiding my PCs on their journey.

During a recent DnD session, my players were defending Shellstack Cove, a cute coastal town of snailfolk, from a bunch of merfolk riding a giant crab! It was one of the wilder missions we've done, but my players made it out alive! (barely!)

Three Merfolk designs for my DnD campaign! They were riding a giant crab when my players encountered them, and it was probably the toughest battle of the campaign so far!

I only drew one monster of my own creation for my Month of Monsters, and that was the Dark Leviathan from Doodleville. Thanks for following along!

Oooo! Love this geometric approach! 🤩💖 Lovely!!

My final piece of Monster Train art for the month is Ekka, High Witch of the Luna Coven! I loved capturing the intricacy of her costume, even if I simplified it a bit. Happy Halloween!! 🎃 👻

Weirdly enough, I haven't drawn many monsters from superhero comics this month, but I had fun sketching out the Abomination, Hulk’s Cold War counterpart. I love that his spiky, textured skin is paired with those adorable wing ears!

A beautiful ode to toxic masculinity, Trap Jaw is the best. Who wouldn’t kill for that jawline, am I right?

Emil Ferris crashed onto the comics scene with her debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters. I love its main character Karen, a lonely wolf-girl trying to solve a murder in the darkest days of 1960s Chicago.

I first got the full Bone collection in college and was blown away by the art and storytelling! @jeffsmithsbone.bsky.social is an absolute legend. His rat creatures are fun villains you meet early on, and I love them so, so much.

I fell hard for Attack on Titan a few years ago, binging the first few glorious seasons of the show. I'm sure fans have a whole lot of feelings about Eren, but you can't deny that his titan design is pretty cool!

When I think “classic monster design,” I can't help but picture Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes! I love all the little details, especially the constant drooling. So gross and so great!

Rector Flicker is the champion of the Melting Remnant in Monster Train, and one of my favorite characters to play! The MR are all about death and rebirth, and I love Flicker's melting, menacing look.

The Wendigo is an evil, cannibalistic creature from Algonquian folklore. I wanted to capture the feeling of stumbling across one in a dark, deserted forest. I had a lot of fun with color and texture in this piece!

Attack on Titan gets off to quite a stunning start with the reveal of the Colossal Titan. I wanted to capture his immense sense of scale, what it might feel like to look up at this absolute monster. All the Titan designs are amazing, but this was the one I had to draw!

One of my childhood obsessions was the early CGI cartoon Reboot. It would only air intermittently, and I scoured the early internet to find out everything I missed from the episodes that didn’t air in the US. Hexadecimal was not the main villain of the show, but she was my favorite. 🎭

Who would have thought of basing an entire children's show on…gargoyles? Truly, a wild concept from the 90s, but with some ageless character designs! (Though, admittedly, I'm not sure about that hair! 😂)