'Living Fossil'

You may or may not have seen the news about a rare frill shark being caught off the coast of Japan. It just so happens that it was in Numazu, the city where I live. I saw the footage on a Japanese news show while I was at the gym, and for about 10 minutes I gawked at the tv in awe, unaware that I was pedaling a little too fiercely on the stationary bike.

I've always had a fixation for the bizarre and grotesque, Mother Nature's little experiments. I went through a small obession with goblin sharks and similar deep sea creatures once. So it thrilled me to bits to see live footage of the rare frill shark, especially in my own town! There was a newscaster on site to see the (already dead) carcass, and he lay down beside it on the tarp as a size comparison. But there was something about the way he just lay so still, gazing thoughtfully at shrivelled, lifeless animal, that was rather poignant.
So I decided to draw the relationship as a man/shark fantasy. I'm still working on using the brushpen, but it's fun, despite a lot of my attempts looking terrible. I colored these two in Photoshop because school is slow on Friday afternoons.

Ironically, there was news this week about an Australian abalone diver getting chomped on by a Great White, but that's another story entirely...