Draconian Onyx
Draconian Onyx is a transgender man and former foster child who always possessed a passionate interest for art. During Onyx’s chaotic childhood where he faced homelessness, unheated winter homes, and a mother who suffered from severe mental illnesses, Onyx always had a pen and paper nearby. Onyx coped with his turbulent environment by reaching for the nearest graphic novel in a Half Price Books or public library, and drawing pictures of his own. His love of comics began with scribbles in his notebooks of Fone Bone from Jeff Smith’s Bone series, submitting his work to comic book publications as fan mail, and making characters of his own. At the age of ten years old, Onyx’s work was published in the final issue of Tiny Titans under his dead name, Ruby Drake.
Onyx continued to draw into his teens, his taste in comics maturing to titles such as Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s The Walking Dead and Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man. While navigating his own mental health issues and an introduction to Olmsted county’s social workers at age 14, Onyx began using art as an unofficial form of therapy. Onyx wanted to give himself a reason to wake up in the morning and a purpose that could give him some form of stability in life soon to be turned upside down. In 2017, the same year Onyx officially became a ward of the state and foster child, Onyx decided to dedicate his life to drawing every day. This arbitrary test of discipline not only ‘saved his life’, but also remains a enthusiastic daily routine he has maintained nearly ten years later.
On May 1st 2021, Onyx created an Instagram account named ‘Brighttusk’ to document his daily drawings. Much of Onyx’s work during this time focused on his love of fantasy, particularly Dungeons and Dragons. Many of his original characters, like the account’s namesake, half-orc Sunny Brighttusk, stemmed from a desire to visualize the characters he created for tabletop roleplaying games. Onyx lacked the social circle and resources to utilize these characters in real games, so he began writing stories for them. Onyx’s use of Instagram evolved overtime through an enthusiastic desire to improve his art and tell his characters’ stories. Onyx experimented with the descriptions under posts to add more context to his drawings, soon facing the issue of reaching the character limit with his free-writing. Onyx began creating short ‘excerpts’ of creative writing within Instagram’s 2200 character limit and studying visual storytelling to strengthen his images.
In 2022 Onyx’s desire for storytelling accumulated into his first major project, Brighttusk. Brighttusk(2022-2023) was Onyx’s first attempt to make his own comic series, this new ambition inspired by a five page comic made on Mother’s Day 2022.
This work led to a series of experimental comics to explore format, medium, and style, before eventually settling on 0.38 G2 ballpoint pen, alcohol markers, construction paper and black Sharpie. The first draft of Brighttusk accumulated into an 8 page teaser posted onto ComicFury, where the it and eventual 100+ pages of Brighttusk can be read today in its entirety. Although Brighttusk was put onto hiatus late 2023 over halfway through Issue #5, Onyx hopes to one day redraw and publish Brighttusk as a comic series and graphic novel.
Following Brighttusk, Onyx began putting a heavier focus onto perfecting his illustrations and combining them with the written word. In 2023, Onyx created a three part illustration series, Three Tales From Broken Men. This series included over 45 illustrations each with a 2200 character ‘excerpt’ of creative writing formatted into three separate books Onyx formatted in three weeks. This series let to a silent auction at Winona State University where 15 posters and 60 booklets were sold to raise over $2000 for Family Service Rochester’s FATHER Project. More information on this exhibition and others can be found on this website’s Exhibitions section.
Onyx continues to draw everyday and dedicate his energy to his creative pursuits. His current project, Granddaughter’s Song, intends to expand upon the themes of Three Tales From Broken Men in a three part series focusing on one character and featuring full length chapters aside illustrations. All completed PDFs of Three Tales From Broken Men and the ‘teasers’ of Act I and II of Grandmother can be found on this website’s portfolio section. Onyx has recently explored the medium of photography in addition to his Illustrative work, which he hopes to exhibit in addition to his other content. Onyx’s dream remains to one day publish and sell his stories, and live a life dedicated to his artistic career. You can find Onyx’s daily art on his Instagram, @Donyxart.
