18 Duke Bathin (set 2)

[darkreaver]

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_de ... Ars_Goetia
Bathin is a Duke (Great Duke according to Pseudomonarchia Daemonum) of Hell, who has under his command thirty legions of demons. He knows the virtues of precious stones and herbs, and can bring men suddenly from one country to another. He helps one attain astral projection, and takes you where ever you want to go.
He is depicted as a strong man with the tail of a serpent, riding a pale horse.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathin
In demonology, Bathin is a duke (Great Duke according to Pseudomonarchia Daemonum) of Hell, who has under his command thirty legions of demons. He knows the virtues of precious stones and herbs, and can bring men suddenly from one country to another. He helps one attain astral projection, and takes one wherever one wants to go.
He is depicted as a strong man with the tail of a serpent, riding a pale horse.
He is mentioned in The Lesser Key of Solomon.
Additional traits:
Element - Air
Metal - Lead
Plant - Mistletoe
Candle colour - Purple
Tarot card - 10 of Swords

source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/lks05.htm
BATHIN.--The Eighteenth Spirit is Bathin. He is a Mighty and Strong Duke, and appeareth like a Strong Man with the tail of a Serpent, sitting upon a Pale-Coloured Horse. He knoweth the Virtues of Herbs and Precious Stones, and can transport men suddenly from one country to another. He ruleth over 30 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this which is to be worn as aforesaid.

image search reveals no classical illustrations of bathin, and contemporary renditions vary wildly. The main features are his snake tail and a white horse. his specialties in astral projection and teleportation especially interest me. I thought it would fit well if he were depicted as a traveler/nomad, a creature of the asian steppes. i plan on pulling a bunch of inspiration from scythian, turkish, and mongol design.



i'm not yet sure about the color palette and composition, i'd love thoughts on that before I start rendering in earnest. I want to go in a different direction from my other demon card, more focus on environment, and more graphic/designy.

[geckzilla]

I'm not sure if it's what you meant in your sketch, there, but I'm really, really liking the idea of having it transition from a city to a forest to a plain with what I assume is his tail intertwined between foreground and background objects.

[darkreaver]

geckzilla: you got the gist of it. the different areas are like sheets of paper, with portals cut into them. Don't know if i will have a foreground in the individual areas, but maybe i will.

just dicking around with color for now.

[darkreaver]

quick update before going to work, got impatient and started rendering things. may bite me in the ass later.

[garg]

Beautiful colors and composition so far!

[geckzilla]

Careful making the border edges too sharp. Everything else has a rough, natural edge but the transition between your art area and the border area is too geometric and perfect now. Not even sure a border is necessary since it cramps him into a small area.

[darkreaver]

garg: thanks!

geck: thanks for the input. I agree that the edges are too hard on around the border (I just made a rectangular selection at the time)...I think i will irregularize the edges a bit. I am gradually making some of the interior edges less organic as well, so I hope to meet somewhere in between. I do rather like the idea of the border however, because it provides more areas of location transition. might change it still though.

[darkreaver]

update. realizing now that the details on the demon probably won't show up well...maybe need to reevaluate what i add in.





*edit* update again.

[garg]

Coming along very well! Just wanted to say that the bright rectangle with the patterns at the top center of the image seems to be drawing my eye towards it a lot.

[darkreaver]

progress.

garg: toned down the top rectangle a bit. other people have mentioned that the city stuff in general draws the eye too much, at the cost of the focus on the demon. hope to address this more later. for now, I tried to decease the contrast in the city a little.

[akida]

Great idea! Hmm.. speaking of balance maybe try to brighten up a bit the duke especially the head area. Even if you want it to be more designy and more focused on background (which is working very well) i think it wouldn't hurt to try and make him more readable.

[darkreaver]

akida: I significantly brightened up the head to contrast it against the background, hopefully that helps things. right now i don't have a clear idea what would be good for the demons's colors, so I'm on autopilot a little...I will likely have to change the colors a bit to improve readability at such a small scale.

small update, worked mainly on the demon himself. noodling with the horse anatomy a bit too.

[L.O]

inspiring! great to see the process as well!
how did you go from the char sketches to the color sketch?
did you do any thumbnails for composition etc also? or just jumped right into color?

[darkreaver]

LO: thanks! before I even started sketching, I already had a clear idea what I wanted in terms of composition...played with a couple possibilities in my head, but didn't feel the need to sketch them out to compare. I was planning on trying out a bunch of color thumbnails, but I ended up liking the look of the first one I did, so I blew it up and went with that. So actually, what you see posted is pretty much what I did.

that makes me a bad concept artist, I know. OH WELL