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Description
Character sketch for a painting I'm working on. the scene involves a man, a dwarf, and a centaur walking through a forest (see man here [link] )

I wanted the whole piece to have a vaguely 16th century feel to it; it seems stylistically fitting for a piece that goes with basically a treasure hunt adventure narrative, it's also a time where you can get away with having a dwarf and centaur in the same picture (centaurs, like a lot of creatures from classical, southern european mythology kind of went underground for a thousand years or so, only to come roaring back up with the renaissance and a renewed popular interest in antiquity)

I pictured centaurs as being the "noble savages," amoung the otherwise mostly white cast of characters that populate medieval fantasy fiction, like the three pagan harpooners from Moby Dick. A big inspiration for this was Queequeg, the island prince who left home to become a whale hunter for hire and signs on to the Pequod's doomed voyage. Something about pacific islanders seems right physically for centaurs, their great size and strength, their alienness to europeans, those huge thick manes of black hair they can grow (to say nothing of those striking Ta Moko face tattoos, which i couldnt resist) also like queequeg, I liked the idea of this guy living as an outsider in a foreign land, a great warrior turned hired mercenary, with fine trappings purchased in human cities, but with his own home and people always in the back of his mind.

Description
Character sketch for a painting I'm working on. the scene involves a man, a dwarf, and a centaur walking through a forest (see man here [link] )

I wanted the whole piece to have a vaguely 16th century feel to it; it seems stylistically fitting for a piece that goes with basically a treasure hunt adventure narrative, it's also a time where you can get away with having a dwarf and centaur in the same picture (centaurs, like a lot of creatures from classical, southern european mythology kind of went underground for a thousand years or so, only to come roaring back up with the renaissance and a renewed popular interest in antiquity)

I pictured centaurs as being the "noble savages," amoung the otherwise mostly white cast of characters that populate medieval fantasy fiction, like the three pagan harpooners from Moby Dick. A big inspiration for this was Queequeg, the island prince who left home to become a whale hunter for hire and signs on to the Pequod's doomed voyage. Something about pacific islanders seems right physically for centaurs, their great size and strength, their alienness to europeans, those huge thick manes of black hair they can grow (to say nothing of those striking Ta Moko face tattoos, which i couldnt resist) also like queequeg, I liked the idea of this guy living as an outsider in a foreign land, a great warrior turned hired mercenary, with fine trappings purchased in human cities, but with his own home and people always in the back of his mind.