"Happiness is a temporary chemical unbalance of the true state of mind..."

This image is a tribute to late comic artist Drew Hayes and his magnificent work: Poison Elves. Featured is my Shadowrun character Alexander 'Bucephalus' Costa - a Night One (furred elves who are a bit on the 'dark side' of life) in my adaption of Drew Haye's unique style. The image and quote depicted is an hommage to one of Drew's most amazing pictures.

This is a traditional piece coloured with Copic Markers as Drew did with the original, I believe. I found a very bad scan of it, but for those who'd like to compare, there you go: http://clzimages.com/comic/large/dc/dc_187560_1_PoisonElvesRequiemForAnElf0TPB.jpg
As Alex is a horse shaman, I added the prehistoric drawings of horses on the wall - they are also a sign of hope, but Alex looks to the sky. He doesn't notice his saviours are right behind him, he's unable to see there's hope. For now.

Poison Elves, for those of you who don't know it, is worth a read. It is both, a very unique comic in style and story, hillariously great humor and agonizing depth as well as the success story of an artist. I have to say, it's cheesy as hell, too. But I like it that way. The Poison Elves style is mainly recognizable for the hillariously oversized elven ears (and the comic makes fun of that several times in-plot).
The works of Drew Hayes have influenced my early drawing carreer a hell lot.

Poison Elves was first published 1996, I think. Drew died in 2006 from pneumonia, as far as I know. RIP Drew. We lost a great artist and a special man with a vision. Drew has dabbled together the first comics in his garage and self-published them because he found no publisher. The story is dark, special, has a very blunt humor and tackled fantasy in a way that was very unique back in the days. Although he found no one to support his vision, he carried on and decided to pull this off himself until he found a publisher. And even then he would always be true to his vision, fiercely defending it, and that although a lot of people said he didn't even have the talent as a writer or artist to make it happen. Apart from the nature of the comic books themselves, this makes the series very special and dear to me. It's a dream come ture, a dream someone fought very hard for, and a story of success. He always stayed true to himself and literally didn't take shit from no one. He didn't only make friends with his attitude from which he had a lot.

If you'd like to know more about Poison Elves (and you should, really) here's a couple of links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_Elves

http://www.cosmictherapy.com/poisonelves.html

http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~bradc/pe/

After Drew's death the series was not continued, much to my demise. But this year, someone has finally took up the task to continue with his vision:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42590

I am really excited!