Monday, April 1, 2013

Shaylon, Prince of Thieves


I was commissioned to do a portrait of a handsome thief character made up by a fan friend of mine. Her world and characters had some inspiration from Zelazny's "Amber" series (note the magic Tarot card) which is why I'm grouping this picture in an Amber retrospective. My friend gave me photos of a TV player, Peter Deuel (or "Duel") who she said looked like the character. I also used a photo of then-well-known rocker "Adam Ant" as a reference. Note that his left hand has only three fingers. This was requested as part of the character's history: in that world, there are elves who naturally only have three fingers on their hands (along with an opposable thumb). "Shaylon," the character, is half-elven so one of his hands has only three fingers. Elven heredity doesn't necessarily follow human rules. "Adam Ant" is still performing and wearing fantasy costumes. Peter Deuel, though, lives on only through long-forgotten TV shows; he killed himself in 1971, long before he was a favorite of my friend. 

This character portrait looks better to me now than it did when I first  painted it, as I remember having a lot of problems with it. I'd like to do more of this kind of work. 

"Shaylon, Prince of Thieves," is acrylic on illustration board, 9" x 11", November 1986.

1 comment:

Tristan Alexander said...

This is amazing! Love everything about it! I will say, I can tell your people a mile away, not a bad thing (I knwo peopel say the same about mine).