flameraven | Four Heavenly Kings

Links to individual pieces:
Pheonix
Turtle
Dragon
Tiger

Whew. I am finally done with this project.

Maybe I shouldn't say that, because all things considered it went pretty fast, but mentally, it was a bit taxing.

For the last couple months I've been thinking of doing a series of paintings based on four Chinese mythological creatures that guard the compass points. (It gets even more complicated than that, with each creature guarding a quarter of the sky and each quarter being divided into seven 'houses' with different constellations... but that's not really important.) I thought they might make good prints for Gen Con.

Well, one Sunday (the 1st) I sat down and finally started work on them. Specifically, I started with the phoenix, the Red Bird of the South. It was quick and fun and probably one of the fastest paintings I've ever done-- something like 3 1/2 hours from sketching it out to finished painting. I actually went ahead and drew up the dragon that evening, and finished it on Wednesday, after which I immediately drew up the turtle. (Then I went to Emmanuel's for dinner and D&D. The dinner was delicious and the D&D-- a playtest of 5e-- was excellent, but I digress.)

After I finished the turtle on... Saturday or Sunday, I was tired enough that I took a break for a few days before working on the last picture, the tiger. I eventually started that last Wednesday, then finished it up Sunday.

Overall I'm pretty pleased, mostly with the tiger and the dragon. The turtle... seems to be lacking something. Maybe it's the background, but it's just not as interesting as the others; too flat. I'm planning on revisiting it sometime in the future, but for now I don't have time. I've still got to order prints for Gen Con and prep them, plus wrangle my website into submission. Fun times. And I just learned Gen Con is officially doing a masquerade again this year, so I'm reconsidering whether to do just a few new masks after all.

We'll see.