Monday Morning Monster; the Psychopomp

Cold weather has finally come to the Pacific NorthWest and right now, most of the time I have to work with the heat turned off, due to Home Improvement.
(That pretty much sums up most things in life right now;  why is it cold, why don't I have any clean socks, why is there a strange man using our bathroom..?  Home Improvement.  Enough said.)

What are you waiting for?  It's freezing out here!

Anyhow, this little fellow is a psychopomp, and he'll guide your soul to the land of the dead when you die.  But it's cold and you're not dead yet, and his toes are starting to go numb...

Don't make me come in there!

The original sketch was drawn back in 2009 for the monster-a-day series, and I've always been rather fond of it.  I tweaked the face a bit, and I bulked up the branch to give a better sense of the smallness of the monster.  In the original pencil the branch is rather wee, and the critter looks roughly the size of an eagle because of it.

This is my second shot at painting with the paint opacity turned up to 100%.  (Mostly, anyway -- I do dial it back when I use the "airbrush" setting to glaze or scumble a bit of atmospheric perspective.)  It is a lot like making the jump from acrylic to oils -- more subtlety and blending are required.  The psychopomp isn't perfect but I am quite please with his personality.