How far can curiosity push an inquisitive mind before plunging it headfirst into madness?

Several drops of blood send ripples through the dark gooey substance on the altar.
Just lab samples - no need for savagery.
Familiar voice inside the cranium grows louder.
It unveils the truth in front of the mind's eye.
Truth that was,
Truth that is,
And truth that is to come as fingers begin flitting across the scroll with life of their own again...

_____
Here's my take on Jazza's_june_2016_mix'nmatch_Challenge_of_the_month.
I had lots of fun drawing this, and can proudly say (once again lol) that this is the BEST thing I've ever drawn up to date.

::On the choice of theme::
Immediate combination that sprung to my mind when I saw the options was an Orc Wizard on fire in The Maze with demonic Altar. Makes a lot sense - maybe too much sense. That kind of a drawing would literally paint itself, so I decided to go for something less obvious.

I couldn't come up with anything reasonable involving a burnt down bedroom. Orc wizard set himself and the bedroom on fire by accident? Or a mad professor with a diesel-powered flamethrower did it? Those ones didn't quite click with me.

Also clean green park in a vacuum with aliens sounded a bit too pristine and joyful while I wanted to draw something grittier and darker.(That's actually completely arbitrary, as One would easily come up with a good gory spacepark if One'd wanted - I get that)

Sneaky murderer with bulging eyes sounded gritty but also kind of lackluster in it's specificity - I wanted something funkier to put a gritty spin on.

The Demonic altar in the middle of a giant Maze was calling my name; or rather prof. Isaac's name. (props if you get the name reference :p)

I really wanted to do something fun with the "Loves to draw" descriptor for the hairy professor. I feel like I kind of bended the rules a little bit there with the drawing inside a drawing thing (?). But screw it - let's call it "creative approach". Kind of cheesy I know, but at least I didn't draw him painting a picture :p
Didn't want to go with a "long haired" scientist image, so I tried to give the character as hairy a pair of knuckles as humanly possible, as well as some wicked-wild sideburns. Think it works. (There used to be a professor with magnificent jet-black sideburns in my Uni - people called him Wolverine. He looked nothing like this though or the Actual Wolverine for that matter :p )
(Plot twist: He wasn't a professor either).

I do not consider designing complexly detailed objects that at the same time look structurally believable to be my forte, so I went for a classic Diablo-II-esque-pool-of-black/red-gooey-stuff kind of demon altar.

Anyway: What's the deal with the weird aspect ratio, am I rite?! Length of the canvas was supposed to augment the length of the scroll; or so goes the idea.
It's definitely better suited as a panel in a comic book, but I really wanted to stick with this form. It surely can't be considered a standard approach, so I'm extremely happy with how it turned out at the very least.
The whole thing is heavily dynamic-influenced. Not sure if I went overboard with it... especially with the wispy wind/mystic energy gust thingy in the midground.

Putting in those whimsy white inky lines over the black line work is such a tiny detail, but it really makes the silhouette punch out!
It's the favorite part of drawing anything for me right now; that and adding mood lighting/giving shape to objects.

Here's a WiP link: http://giphy.com/gifs/wip-cotmjune2016-drawwithjazza-xT0Gqlg6PAmi5qxrgY

Sidenote: Original image exceeded the NewGrouds square pixel size limit by almost seven times O_o
Had to scale it down from 8000x3000.
Rookie mistake :s
Come to think of it: Why did I even work in such a ridiculous resolution to begin with?