Thursday, September 25, 2014

Eddings Characters


Here are more character portraits from David Eddings' "Belgariad." I borrowed the faces from real people in film stills or photos gathered in magazines. (In the olden days before Google Image Search, Flickr, and the endless Interweb, I used to gather my reference images from these printed paper sheafs.) These three characters are the young hero Garion, his Grandfather-wizard Belgarath, and his Aunt-sorceress Polgara. The Grandfather is taken from Alec Guinness as Gulley Jimson in the film THE HORSE'S MOUTH; the boy is taken from a youthful German ballet dancer. The background is inspired by those of Maxfield Parrish. Garion is holding a royal magic sword, which is topped by the "Orb," the main talisman of the story, because every magic story about a young person with a Special Destiny has to have at least one of these glowing stone talisman thingies.

Acrylic on illustration board, 12" x 16", July 1984. Click for larger view.

1 comment:

Tristan Alexander said...

Very nice, love the sword design a lot (except the big ball on top). I recognized Obiwan...er Alec and the grandmother reminded me of Snape from Harry Potter. Very effective book cover design!