Keolsrir the Dark Wyrm
His breath turns iron to slag and bone to ash.
Sovereign of the obsidian peaks, Keolsrir ruled the skyward ridges long before the mortal kingdoms fell, his razor-honed scales hardened by centuries of dragonfire.
The Inspiration
From first reading The Hobbit as a child and being introduced to Smaug, I became fascinated by dragons. Playing D&D showed me further classifications and species to keep me hooked.
Keolsrir is a what I see in my mind’s eye when I think of a dragon in the classic D&D style. He’s imperious, aloof, incredibly dangerous and unfathomably intelligent. To focus on the details of the face, I chose to show only the head and neck of the wyrm – to include the body would have risked losing some of his personality (which the vanity of dragons would never allow)
The Craft
Knowing that I was only going to be using the central portion of the plywood on which I was burning, I chose a grain pattern that seems to suggest heat radiating from the Dragon – swirling upwards and around the head.
The shading was executed mostly in an ink-pen style, using strong black lines rather than variations in heat and colour – the only real exception being the tip of the snout. The dark shading is intended to convey the hardness of the scales.
