Tusken Raiders from "Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope"

I have been a hopeless Star Wars fan ever since the first film came out, in 1977, when I was in kindergarten. My favorite characters were always the monsters and aliens.

The Tusken Raiders seemed like the scariest monsters in the world to me, when I was in kindergarten. The idea of these ugly, featureless, screaming masked beings who were so frenzied and savage that they would just automatically kill you for wandering into their territory, chilled me to the bone. I always thought they looked neat but the sounds they made freaked me right the hell out. The Tusken Raiders (or Sand People, as the locals call them) were one type of monster that made me love this fantasy world right from the beginning. I suppose I have been a hopelessly addicted Star Wars fan ever since.

And for the record, before you even ask, yes - I even love the Prequel films. I can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to Star Wars. Whenever I visit that world I am happy. Even when certain people who live there occasionally say or do awkward things I don't understand, I just kind of accept it. Sort of like when you watch the History Channel and learn some weird, surprising fact about a historical figure you thought you knew everything about. I just kinda go, "Huh. I never imagined it woulda been that way." Then I go back to enjoying the fun parts.

That said, I haven't bothered with anything Star Wars post 2005 / Episode 3. My love might be intense and obsessive but it is focused on the 6 main films, and there it ends. I have no interest in the Expanded Universe material or the newer, animated Clone Wars stuff.

About 2 years ago, I tried to start a series of drawings that I wanted to call, "The Monsters of Star Wars". It was just a personal project I was doing in my spare time. Each drawing in this intended series would feature a different weird alien or monster from the 6 Star Wars movies. I planned on doing maybe 10 or 12 of these illustrations but only ever finished 3.

I have been sitting on those 3 drawings ever since, assuming that eventually I would get back to this series and finally unleash all my Star Wars drawings on the unsuspecting public, in one big batch. But other, more important (paying) projects kept cropping up along the way, and I kept finding myself with less and less time to do them.

Yesterday I was going through the art folders on my computer, getting rid of old stuff and clearing space for new stuff, and ran across my Star Wars drawings again. When I realized that 2 whole years had slipped by since I'd even thought about working on them, it seemed a little silly to keep holding back the few fragments of a larger whole that I might never finish. So I guess I will just post the ones I have finished. Eventually I hope to get back to this little series, though. I would love to finish all the drawings I had in mind.