Chimaera Cliffs

The cross-horned Chimaera is a very rare and elusive beast. The elaborate and brightly colored headdress of the male is much sought after by trophy hunters; a situation that has decimated the population and caused them to become shy and reclusive. Females are colored more plainly, have very little mane, and much shorter horns.

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Hit download for a larger version, if you like.

I have worked on this piece for approximately 24 hours total, over six weekends. I needed natural light to work on it, because otherwise it was hard to see how the colors were working, which meant that by the time I got home from work on weekdays I didn't have any light to work by.

This is done entirely in pencil crayon. (I've always said that it's my best medium, and now you know why.) I did not use any black in the shading, and used only a touch of black in the pupil of the eye. (Most of the pupil is actually really dark brown.) All the rest of the dark shading was created by mixing complimentary colors.

I am both extremely proud of this piece and very disappointed with it. I think it's probably the best thing I have ever done, and yet some aspects of it are deeply flawed, which causes me no end of grief. However, I'm not going to point out what's wrong with it. That's up to you to tell me if you notice anything.

Things I am proud of:
- Full background, when I am usually too lazy to spend much time on such things.
- Trees. (The green... so. much. green. *rocks back and forth muttering to herself*)
- The tree trunk. There are 11 colors of pencil crayon in that tiny trunk. I counted.
- The horns. Usually I suck at drawing horns. These turned out really well.

The background for this piece was based (sometimes very loosely) on this piece of stock art by : [link]

Music is always an important part of my creative process. The two songs that were most played during this piece were probably Led Zeppelin's "I'm Gonna Leave You" and Nightwish's "Meadows of Heaven".

Should anyone happen to be interested in buying this, I would be willing to sell it, but please consider how much time and effort went into it before making an offer.