Wednesday, October 5, 2011

31 Monsters in 31 Days: Day 5 - The Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil . . . hmmmmmm I've heard about this guy for a while but really only knew two things about him. The first was that NHL team the New Jersey Devils named their hockey team after him and there was a video game based on a version of the beast.

After some research I discovered a little bit about the Jersey Devil making him interesting to me. The creature is said to dwell in the Pine Barrens of southeastern New Jersey and although there seem to be multiple versions of the character in artwork he generally has the head of a horse-like creature with wings and claws. The legend of the Devil goes back many years to the 18th century when a woman off ill repute "Mother Leeds" who had already had 12 starving children found out that she was pregnant with a 13th child that she did not want she proclaimed "I don't want any more children! Let it be a devil." When the child was born it was said to be horribly deformed and crawled into the woods and soon began to hunt livestock and small children. Reported sighting of the Jersey Devil were still being reported up through the mid 1960's.


In my drawing I decided to just go with the tie in to the hockey team by placing him in a New Jersey Devils team jersey and making his head a little less horse-like than most drawings but not human either.

The colors are Copic Markers.


You can find out more about the hockey team at their official website here: New Jersey Devils
There are lots of websites that tell the tale of the Jersey Devil you can get more information at Strangemag.com, Wikipedia, and the Shadowlands as well as many other sites.


Beware the 13th child,
Kevin P. Johnson

All artwork and contents of this blog are Copyright ©2011 Kevin P. Johnson - All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted.

The Jersey Devil © 2011 Kevin P. Johnson

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