The Undying Sovereign
Centuries turn to dust, yet he remains.
Entombed within ancient gothic stone, this withered patriarch watches over his quiet realm, enduring on the dark essence of forgotten eras.
The Inspiration
I’ve always loved horror films and this piece is heavily influenced by Max Schreck‘s Count Orlok in the 1922 classic Nosferatu.
The Undying Sovereign shows an ancient vampiric entity standing in his crumbling ancestral abode. Dressed in outdated clothing, he clutches his staff and stares deeply into your soul. The intention was not to produce a terrifying image but rather a familiar horror trope without becoming too cheesy – think early horror films rather than The Munsters.
The Craft
This piece took a long time to create. The line work was simple there are no challenging shapes or details to contend with. Where the difficulties lay was with the volume of shading required.
The really dark areas of the piece were filled using a large ball tip. The details, line work and shading were executed using a very fine wire tip. The shading on the folds of the robes was pretty intuitive, if time consuming. The shading on the stonework and pillars behind the subject took an age: building up shadows with very light burning on each stone individually and then revisiting once all were in place to add overall shadow to match the subject.
