SAD: Balor Sketch
SAD: Balor Prelim Design by *uhlrik on deviantART
Though I've not posted anything about my ongoing Sketch-a-day thing lately, it's still ongoing. Since I'm most of the way done with one of my more battered sketchbooks, I'm focusing on using that until it's full so there's not been a lot of the digital stuff to post here.
However, I really wanted to put this idea down and sketchbook work didn't feel right for this one, so back to the tablet I went. It's not really a finished piece (but then, finished work isn't the point of SAD, in case ya haven't cottoned on to that yet). What it is, however, is a concept piece helping me get this idea down before it flies out of my head.
I've been thinking of various ways thet the Lords of Winter might manifest if they were to appear in a manner that mortal beings can comprehend them. They're unutterably ancient and powerful primordial forces that can simultaneously be referred to as mighty totem spirits, demon lords, faerie princes and demigods. They aren't truly finite beings in quite the way that you and I think of ourselves as beings: they're really more like forces, and in actuality they're pretty much formless as well, though they can form bodies as well.
I've been doing a number of sketches of Lords of Winter lately and have been pretty much dissatisfied, especially with Balor (the one shown here). Balor tends to end up looking a bit like a Plaguebearer of Nurgle, and while I like Plaguebearers, I wanted something else for the He of the Evil Eye.
So I hit upon the idea that perhaps these primordial forces might have made or acquired artifact masks that would allow them to contain a portion of their ineffable nature, essentially creating avatars of themselves in order to directly interact with other beings.
Anyhow, Balor here is supremely bad news. He/it is something of a personification of the will to dominate and ravage, arguably the essence of the tyranny of vast, looming and forbidding nature. Not a chap that one wants to encounter.
commentary welcome.
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