Z is for Zashiki-warashi

In contrast to all the zombies, my final entry for AlphaBeasts! is a not-very-beastly beast: meet Zashiki-warashi, an auspicious yōkai that takes the form of a young child with a red face & bobbed hair. She protects the household & brings good luck, but occasionally performs benign mischief such as sitting on someone's futon or turning over pillows.

Acrylic on Cream of Wheat advertisement scanned from True Experiences magazine, February 1937, ~6.5"x8"

And with that, AlphaBeasts is put to bed... *sniff* ...here are all mine in one place. Many thanks to Andrew Neal for hosting... & for putting me in his final Zombie illustration!

...next week brings fresh hazards to be faced!

Y is for Yama-oroshi

Apologies for the late post & AlphaBeasts! entry-- lots going on with work & family right now, so I may miss a post here & there in the hubbub.

Yama-oroshi was actually one of my favorite Yokai discoveries-- its whole existence is based on a pun, & there's just something so delightfully random about a radish grater monster!

Acrylic on text scanned from Sears Roebuck Catalog of 1897.

W is for Wanyūdō

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is Wanyūdō, a yokai that takes the shape of a flaming wheel bearing an anguished, disembodied face. If you come too close, it's likely to steal your soul & roll it back to Hell. I think the kids in the background are probably wise to keep their distance, but hey, I guess it is "some tire"!

Acrylic on ad scanned from St. Nicholas Magazine, August 1920, ~6.5"x9"

edit: Joey Weiser sent me a fabulous YouTube clip of Gegege noKitaro featuring Wanyūdō!

edit #2: EC Steiner (a.k.a. King Unicorn) sent another Wanyūdō cameo, this time from The Great Yokai War! (The big wheel makes his appearance around 1:33.)

V is for Vanpaia

I took a few liberties with this week's AlphaBeasts! entry.  Japanese legends did not include a vampire in the Dracula model, & the word vanpaia certainly sounds like a modern coinage. More traditional was the Nukekubi, a creature who looks like a normal human, but whose head can detach at the neck & fly around at night attacking folks (somewhat related to the Rokurokubi). I mixed the genres a bit with this one... so sue me!

Acrylic on ad scanned from Sears Roebuck catalog of 1897 "I'm Dr. Barker & I vant to build your bloooooood!!" with some PS, ~4"x5"

U is for Ushi-oni

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is Ushi-oni, a sea-dwelling, ox-headed menace.

I don't usually leave this much empty border around a piece, but I just couldn't bring myself to tear off the words "curiously illustrated" on the bottom.

Not really too pleased with the visual effect. That will teach me to indulge my verbal obsessions. Ah well!

Acrylic on text & illustration from St. Nicholas Magazine, August 1920.

T is for Tengu

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is Tengu, a red-faced, long-nosed goblin that roams the world making mischief & punishing the vain. You may have seen masks of this character in Japanese restaurants.

Acrylic on advertisement for Post Bran Flakes, scanned from Delineator magazine, December 1930, ~ 6"x9"

What a lovely, supportive headline, eh? And the copy is even more so:
"You may as well be frank with yourself-- let the least shadow of fatigue dim your facial freshness, let the tiniest trace of tiredness write its hairline autograph at the corners of your eyes or mouth-- and-- "She looks positively washed out, poor dear!" they will say-- "She's one of my best friends and I wouldn't have her hear me say it for worlds, but I'm afraid, so afraid, she's beginning to lose her looks."

Of course, bran flakes will reverse that pesky aging process! Ah, advertising. I sometimes wish Tengu would target copy-writers!

R is for Rokurokubi

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is Rokurokubi. These yokai look like normal humans by day, but at night, they are real rubber-neckers.

Acrylic on illustration scanned from True Experiences Magazine, February 1937. Honestly I couldn't believe my luck when I found this illo & caption!

Click here if you'd like to see all my AlphaBeasts thus far.

O is for Otoroshi

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts is Otoroshi, an exceptionally hairy, tusk-bearing, gate-guarding monster. Normally he hangs out on temple gates, but this time he's gracing a Marvel-ous wire number from Jim Brown's Catalogue, 1939.

N is for Namazu

This week's critter for AlphaBeasts! is Namazu, a giant catfish monster who causes earthquakes & tsunamis whenever he manages to wrestle free from his usual captive state. I thought it was interesting that catfish do tend to abandon their normal bottom-feeding habits when they feel tremors; their unusual activity at such times probably led to this legend.

Acrylic on illustration from Cornell's Primary Geography, 1873. (And yes, I know catfish don't live in the ocean. Namazu is a river-beast. But I figured he might wander seaward when he's in mid-mischief.)

J is for Jinmenju

Hobbling in late in the day for this week's AlphaBeasts! is the curious Jinmenju or head tree. Please forgive my tardiness... trees do move rather slowly, after all. (For instance, our Christmas tree still hasn't managed to make it through the door.)

Instead of the usual fruit, or shiny baubles in the holiday spirit, this particular tree sports living human(ish) heads. Traditionally they are all smiling & laughing, but I've been going through a lot of mood swings lately despite the seasonal ho-ho-hoing, so I decided to let them emote as they would.

I really should have done this one in Photoshop for speed & tweakability, but no, I had to go & do it in acrylic, on a page scanned from Jim Brown's Catalogue, 1939. ~4.5"x7" When I realized I was running late, I rushed through it, & I'm not very pleased with the results... oh well.

H is for Hakutaku

This is a belated entry for last week's AlphaBeasts!

Hakutaku is the Japanese name for a Chinese monster, Baí Zé, who supposedly dictated a legendary demonography. The original Chinese form of this creature was more lion-like, but in Japan it developed a more chimeric form, possessing nine eyes & six horns, a semi-human face & goat-like hooves. Further distorted by me. :-)

Acrylic on an ad scanned from a 1937 True Experiences magazine, ~5.5"x7.5"

I'm hoping to get back to my regular Oddments schedule now, but I am still running behind due to the dreadful computer crash, so please forgive me if I'm a tad erratic!

I is for Inu-gami

The oddments are back with a roar!!!! That is to say, with a ferocious entry for AlphaBeasts!

This avenging beast is the Inu-gami, a dog spirit.  Frankly this one really terrifies me.

I have a mild fear of dogs to begin with, due to the many attacks engraved on my memory from one traumatic teenage year as a bicycle-riding paper carrier-- but that's not why-- it is the way these creatures are created that really give me the creeps:

According to the Obakemono Project: "One method for creating an inu-gami, it is said, is to tie a hungry dog and place a bowl of food just out of its reach. When its desire is thus focused, its head must be cut off and enshrined, moving its ravenousneeds into the spirit world and creating a terrible weapon for the dog's former master."

Other sources suggested burying a dog up to its neck with food just out of reach, then beheading it. :-O

That's what I call a horror story! I fervently hope people didn't actually do this sort of thing... please let it just be mythological...

Acrylic on cover illustration scanned from St. Nicholas Illustrated Magazine, September 1908. Why these finely-clad youngsters were weighing their puppy, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting this fellow to barge in.

p.s. Yes, my computer is working again! My electrical engineer brother heroically nursed it back to life. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I'm so happy to be back in action! Thanks "Byte Barn"! (That's what he calls his all-too-busy family-&-friends tech service company, ha!)

G is for Gashadokuro

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts!

If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise... Gashadokuro, the giant skeleton! This huge & deadly creature likes to bite off human heads. Its appearance is heralded by a ringing in the ears. I think I've had some close encounters after performances by loud bands! ;-)

Acrylic on illustration scanned from Frank Leslie's Chatterbox, 1880-1881, ~6.5"x7.5" You may need to click the image to see the tiny human in the picture-- he was much more prominent to my eyes before the skeleton crept in, though luckily he still has his head.

Edit: Isaac asked to see the original illo before Oddification, so here it is! Click for a closer view, & I think you'll see what I mean about the human figure.

Also, I can finally now reveal that the "Mysterious" series was to illustrate A Word A Day for this week! As a word nerd, I dearly love that site, & I've been a subscriber for ages, so I was over the moon to be a part of it.

Speaking of over the moon, I just have to give a shout-out to another Curiosity: the one that's headed to Mars!!

F is for Futakuchi-onna

This week's entry for Alphabeasts! is Futakuchi-onna, the two-mouthed woman. A woman who has been starved,  often by a miserly husband, develops a second mouth in the back of her head, two snaky ropes of hair that reach out to grab whatever food is nearby, & a hugely voracious appetite, though no food passes through her normal lips.

Acrylic on ad scanned from a 1937 True Experiences magazine, ~5"x6"

Isn't it interesting how much ideals of beauty have changed since then? And how little advertising has? This magazine was full of weight-gain snake oil ads... exactly the same tone of shaming & quick-fix hope as in today's diet ads, only in the opposite direction!

E is for Enenra

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts!

Enenra is a smoke-monster, normally found hanging around bonfires, but today emerging from a pack of pipe tobaccy. Can you believe this ad, from a 1939 True Detective!? Nothing like a whiff of good tobacco smoke to cure what ails you!

p.s. Yes, I live in Raleigh, NC, tobacco country. But my grandfather smoked a pipe until the day he could no longer breathe. He died of emphysema. So did my grandmother, who only inhaled his (nonstop) second-hand smoke.  I am not a tobacco advocate!

D is for Daidara-bocchi

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts!

This fearsome yet playful giant was apparently very fond of messing about with mountains, hence the setting for this portrait, taken from Redway's Natural Elementary Geography, 1897.

I must say, as fond as I am of old textbooks, their blithe stereotyping & patronizing tone often make me squirm. I wonder what Daidara-bocchi would think of the excerpt here....

Acrylic on found illustration, ~4½"x5½". By the way, the big old scratch where D-b's fingernail lands was on the original-- I suspect the engraver's plate had been damaged.

C is for Chōchinobake

I was so tickled to discover this monster, clearly related to Jack-o'-Lantern, just in time for the Halloween edition of AlphaBeasts!


Acrylic on found illustration, ~4½"x5½"


The illo in the background is from one of my favorite Fleam Finds, The Museum of Science & Art, 1855. I couldn't bear to tear that one up, so I scanned  & printed it to paint over. If you click to enlarge & look very closely, maybe you can see the flying bat-skulls on the wall. I didn't even notice those until I started painting-- kinda spooky! Happy Halloween, everybody!

B is for Bake-Neko

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is again inspired by Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yakō.

The bake-neko is a giant ghost-cat. According to The Obakemono Project, "...bake-neko could exceed normal cats in size by orders of magnitude, reaching their enormous arms in through doors looking for human prey like an average feline pawing around in a mousehole...."

Her Odd Materials No. 16

Acrylic on a torn-out portion of an illustration from St. Nicholas magazine, August 1920, ~4"x5"

A is for Amikiri

Today is a red-letter, red-monster day: the beginning of a new alphabet project, AlphaBeasts!

Successor to Ben Towle's Animal Alphabet, this one is hosted by Andrew Neal & will center on mythical creatures. I think it may be even more fun than the last! I'm hoping to do all 26 letters, & looking forward to discovering many new oddities along the way.


My first AlphaBeast is the Amikiri, or Net Cutter, from Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yakō. I'd never heard of this curious creature with its very specific form of mischief before. I certainly hope it leaves my curtains & fishnets alone!

While this is AlphaBeast No.1, it is also Her Odd Materials No.13. Hmm, sounds like something from mystic numerology.... Acrylic on a cutting from a Larkin Catalog, c.1940, ~5"X6", found at the Fleam of course.

By the way, if you'd like to see my entries for the last series, Animal Alphabet, you'll find most of them on my sketch/process blog, Curious Art Lab. I was late to the party though, so you won't find all 26 letters there, alas!