Vortrex, the hermit

• Title: Vortrex, the hermit
• Date: 2018
• Material: Carbon on paper, digitally assisted
• Software: Photoshop and Illustrator
• Work Type: Fantasy novel illustration
• Publication: Crawlum Multiverse: The Dragon Fortress (2018)

Illustration made for the book “Crawlum Multiverse: the dragon fortress”, a heroic fantasy novel of my authorship. The book relates the adventures of the Jeath, a young man who, at the moment of attempting suicide, is transported by a mysterious magic to another dimension. In that dimension there is a city in the middle of a valley, enslaved by four powerful dragons.

Character’s pitch

Vortrex is an ancient warrior who fought side by side with the dragons in a Great War years ago. Rejected by his people, he is now a hermit who lives outside the city. The tattoos on his skin represent his bloodline:

On his chest he has engraved “The Daughter of the Thunder” represented by two twin daggers, the emblem of the city of the Valley.

On his left arm he holds “The Eye of the Hurricane”, a symbol that represents The Thunder, the deity venerated by his people.

Finally he has a twin-headed dragon on his forearm, symbol of the Ancient Alliance with the dragons of the Fortress.

Making of Vortrex

The illustration is made in pencil. The tattoos were vectorized in Illustrator and deformed in Photoshop to be adapted to the shape of the forearm. Then they were printed on transparent paper and retraced in pencil on the original drawing.