Draconian Onyx
Visual Artist, Writer, Book Designer
Draconian Onyx is a twenty-three-year old visual artist that has drawn every day for over eight years. Originally inspired by his love of the fantasy genre and Dungeons and Dragons, Onyx utilizes this genre to explore complex and mature themes such as trauma, mental health, and LGBT experiences.
Onyx uses multiple visual mediums in harmony with his writing to create truly unique and memorable stories. His most famous work is Illustrative series, Three Tales From Broken Men, which combined book design, creative writing, and visual storytelling to raise over 2000$ to charity. You can learn more about this exhibition in this website’s exhibition section. Onyx has spent the most time mastering ballpoint pen and alcohol markers, but he has dabbled in other visual mediums such as photography and book design.
Onyx’s other notable work includes his his 100+ page traditionally drawn webcomic Brighttusk(2022-2023), his published illustrations and photography in the literary journal, Satori(2024-2025), and his current ongoing series, Granddaughter’s Song(2023-present). Free access to his ready to print books can be found in the Portfolio section.
Multi-Media Artist
Onyx’s hundreds of illustrations combine traditionally drawn ballpoint pen, alcohol markers, and digital enhancement via Adobe Photoshop. Each illustration takes anywhere from 3-10+ hours depending on complexity, size, colors, and digital edits. This carefully intricate process begins with one to several thumbnails, continues with a Col-Erase Pencil sliding across the page, sophisticated lines of hatching taking hours to perfect, deliberate strokes of brush tipped markers, and finally strengthening the use of light and color via digital enhancement. Onyx also excels in creating stunning black and white images perfect for decorating a page of text or tattooed skin.
The content of Onyx’s images mainly concern fantasy and fantastical worlds. Dungeons and Dragons inspired species such as half-orcs, tieflings, and elves can be found across most of his work. Onyx believes the medium of fantasy allows writers greater narrative complexity due to fantasy’s ability to ‘bring to life’ otherwise intangible concepts. Fantasy has the unique ability to turn complex intangible ideas, such as generational trauma, into physical beings that exist in these worlds. By turning the subconscious, unseen, and painful into ‘real’ objects within the narrative, it allows those who relate to these struggles better understand themselves.
Onyx’s most substantial comic work continues to be Brighttusk(2022-2023). What began as taking a few images of comic pages on his phone, turned into scanning, editing and lettering four 12-24 page issues of traditionally drawn comic pages. Onyx taught himself to use Adobe Illustrator to add speech bubbles after handwriting and gluing the speech bubbles of the first three issues. Although the fifth issue of Brighttusk remains incomplete, Onyx one day hopes to redraw and publish Brighttusk as a series of comics and/or graphic novels.
As of present day, Onyx hopes to incorporate comic pages into his illustrative books as a form of visual storytelling.
Onyx has recently delved into the world of digital photography through his several series exploring identity, homosexuality, and social connection. His strongest works explore the conflicts between art and the artist. In the piece to the left, Swinging Canvas, Onyx treats himself as a literal art piece as he drenches his body in paint, seeming to battle with some unseen enemy. Other works from Onyx’s identity series include the header to this website’s homepage where he is surrounded by a fraction of his work, and several photos of him in his studio.
Onyx hopes to continue to take photographs, and one day exhibit them in a commercial gallery. Onyx suspects upcoming photography series will incorporate themes of masculinity, queerness, and connection.