Balam (also Balaam, Balan) is a great and powerful king of Hell who commands over forty legions of demons. He gives perfect answers on things past, present, and to come, and can also make men invisible and witty.
Balam is depicted as being three-headed. One head is the head of a bull, the second of a man, and the third of a ram. He has flaming eyes and the tail of a serpent. He carries a hawk on his fist and rides a strong bear. At other times, he is represented as a naked man riding a bear.
His name seems to have been taken from Balaam, the Biblical magician.
Ok, so we have a guy with three heads, a tail of a snake, a falcon and he is riding a fucking BEAR. This is a lot to try to incorporate, but how could I not. This description is awesome piled on top of radical and smothered in badass.
My first order of business was to decide on how to have these three heads attached to a body. There is always the traditional three across, but I wanted to do something a little more inventive. I decided that I'm going to take a bit of artistic license here and deviate from the description a bit.
after some sketches I came upon the idea of having the Bull's head at the bottom growing from the chest and cracking open to have the Ram's head sprouting from the skull. And to have the Human head doing the same from the ram's split head. Like a demonic russian nesting doll.
Here is my sketch for the human head. (I kept the hair looking slick since it just popped out of a Ram's skull)
Here is a sketch of the heads cracking and growing out of each other.
And here is an attempt at the full figure riding the bear. Note that I haven't worked on the other arm that will be holding the falcon yet.
That's all for now. I'll be back with more progress soon. Thanks in advance for looking and any crits or observations.
JM
