Steve and I got together one night and decided that it would be fun if we were each to produce a drawing on the same subject. Who better for our subject than the one character we truly love to hate: Juniper, Ed's self-righteous "journalist". We enjoyed the experience so much we have continued to produce similarly themed works in each drawing session since.
This one is, of course, Steve's. Imagine you are on the other side of a window, when suddenly this punk's face is forced roughly against the glass. Who Juniper's aggressor is we can only guess… nearly everyone who meets him can be said to have a motive, not to mention justification. All we have to go on is a very large boot size.
I truly congratulate Steve for pulling this off. It's quite a difficult piece, especially making the flattened parts of Juniper's face define the "pane" of invisible glass. I deepened the shadows digitally to give the picture a little more contrast.
Here's my contribution to the "Suffering Juniper" collection. This is actually my interpretation of a scene that actually took place early in our Tribe 8 cycle. A newborn cell of brash and adventurous young Fallen - Chigger, Cinder, Mana, Juniper, and Bastion - fought their way up into a "Sky Realm" (Fallen-speak for what were once urban highrises) to destroy an evil Z'Bri. Unfortunately for our heroes, one of their own number, Bastion, was already under the thumb of this powerful demonic entity. By the time Eshlazi (the Z'Bri) had finished with them, the seeds of corruption had already been sown in the heart of each cell member.
As part of an experiment by Eshlazi, in which he apparently hoped to vicariously "discover" the nature of human pain, the monster had removed and eaten most of the flesh from Juniper's back. This is the scene that began the first of the cell's many revelations of ruin, culminating in its final dissolution. The characters were singled out and separated; the cell dismembered one piece at a time. From the ashes, we hope, something more effectual and potent will arise.
Back to the picture. The "vignette" effect was added digitally after the fact, along with a bit of shadowplay; the original has a very small Juniper, devastatingly alone in the middle of a huge white background. In both cases, I am quite proud of the effect, although I imagine some people will be offended by the subject material… I certainly am.