SIDE NOTE! I noticed some people are upset because this is not perfectly accurate to the legends. I am aware of that, they don’t have antlers, exposed skulls, etc. I was not going for accuracy, I had a creative idea and went with it. I thought I was clearly stating that in my original description, but I guess not. So to be clear: This is NOT an accurate representation of the wendigo. I did this design based off of an idea I had and was trying to do something fun. After reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King I was inspired to do my own interpretation of a wendigo. It’s mentioned like once in the 2019 Pet Sematary film, but has a bigger presence in the books. I’ve always thought wendigos were interesting to begin with, so I just got even more inspired to draw one. For those of you who don’t know, a wendigo is from Native American lore. Most say if you eat another human you become cursed for doing something so taboo and you become a wendigo, cursed to turn into this emaciated looking supernatural monster that is always craving flesh and never satisfied. They are truly monsters of gluttony and greed. Most artist draw them as emaciated looking humans with either antlers or a deer skull for a head. I love the concept-but for my design I wanted something different and more gruesome. So I came up with the idea of what if the human- after consuming human flesh- transformed painfully and horrifically into this monster? I mixed many different type of animals: deer, bear, wolf, raven, rattlesnake, porcupine, and some still human characteristics to remind you of what this thing used to be. I had the idea of instead of just a deer skull what if the antlers just shot right out of the man’s eye sockets, while the new ‘head’ bursts through the man’s jaws? It’s a terrible curse, so I wanted it to look just painful. You can also see his new monstrous hand burst out from his once human hands. As a tribute to Stephen King’s interpretation of the wendigo I gave him a yellow tongue like the once described in Pet Sematary. I had a lot of fun designing this beast and might take on more mythological and cryptid illustrations along with my anatomy studies.