Shaman's Soul: Drawing the Dragon Painting

11" x 14" Oil painting on gessoed watercolor paper, double matted and framed to 16" x 20"

This painting was created for the Program Cover for the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH from when I was the Artist Guest of Honor in 2017.

This painting took +/- 75 hours to complete!

In this piece:
~ At my first Origins in 2000 my main piece in the Art Show (and now my web presence name) was a painting called Shaman’s Soul . I wanted to continue in that theme for the cover. In this case though, my Shaman woman is summoning a Dragon Spirit.
~ Below the Shaman, are glowing “crystals” of various colors. The crystals are dice, and in the center, the numbers show 6 1 4 1 8 17 for the dates of the show .
~ The Shaman has gold rings hanging from her top. These represent the work I did on Legend of the Five Rings.
~ In the lower right corner is a cow skull, glowing from within. This is representative of my very first ever published CCG painting, Gift of the Thunderbird for Doomtown by AEG. I got this assignment right after Origins 2000.
~ The (white) wolf walking in right side of the painting is representative of the work I did for White Wolf (Vampire: the Eternal Struggle CCG, and World of Darkness).
~ In the tree above the skull is the little Origins critter, peeking out of a knot in the tree.
~ The background itself is an homage to Larry Elmore’s Dragons of Autumn Twilight (with the hill, leaning tree, and red dragon). That book was the catalyst that made me want to be a fantasy illustrator.
~ The dragon in the background is a modified version of Wang LoHung, one of my My Little Demons. Again, Origins was the show where I premiered the Demons for the first time ever, in 2008.
~ I chose to make Wang LoHung sleeping as a nod to the book The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenburg. That book was the first book that piqued my interest in Fantasy!
~ Unbeknownst to most people...Wang LoHung is *NOT* a dragon, but a Kirin.