The Hadeshorn (Shannara)

Another rare instance of me deciding to create some fan art. In this case it is a scene from the Shannara epic fantasy novels where a spirit of a dead protector of the realm is summoned from the deathly waters of the Hadeshorn, a magical portal to the realm of the dead. A place where spirits of great power may be called upon to aid the mortals capable of calling their attention with some insight into the route of their adventure, albeit rather cryptic and imperceptible to those with a worldly perspective on their plight.

Here pictured is a Druid, a mysterious magic-wielding defender of the realm calling on a friendly-though foreboding and frightfully grim spirit of a long dead former druid tasked in the afterlife to aid their descendants until their own place as a shade of the afterlife is taken by the current Druid in service to the realm, allowing a proper, final peaceful rest in the world beyond.

I had not yet mastered capturing the sense of scale that I was hoping to present. Of the Druid, a dark, robed being of nearly super-human stature acting as edifice against the swirling winds and life-draining energies of this magically irradiated hole in the Dragon's Teeth mountains where souls forever fall into some sort of final death. Then take that human creature and have him in all his elemental prowess, as he bends the very barrier between life and death and make him appear wholly dwarfed in size and intensity by a spirit of his predecessor, and truly black and depthless specter whose very presence defies all logic and understanding, threatening with even a passive presence, to utterly wipe away the body and mind of our Druid of the living realm.

Thinking on it now almost makes me want to revisit the scene and make a fully realized version with my better-developed skills, ideas, and tools.

A few years after completing Bad Poetry, I was able to meet Mr. Brooks and thank him for all the great work and inspiration he brought into the world and that I was able to tap into it to enrich my imagination, if only a little. He did sign this very painting in my sketchbook, which certainly made my day, as he is my favorite author in the genre.

It was still a personal technical feat for me, as drawing the lesser specters was a matter of purely using exclusion to achieve the effect of transparency and diaphanous forms, so I've never felt too let down with this piece, for all the planning and careful application of technique that was required to even consider playing with these ideas for composition.

Part of the reason I don't create 'Fan Art' much is because the element of Art is readily lost ecause the creator of the piece can not easily inject their own personality and ideas into a vessel made to encapsulate the ideas and desires of a different person altogether. It's like stealing somebody's clothes and expecting those garments to fit well. Such is the case here, as it may be called Fan Art, but there is precious little Art taking place .