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Styrax: Heavy yet sweet, dark and mysterious. It is one of the most important incense in general. It was devoted to the dark godess Hekate, the mistress of all witches and enchantresses and the godess of all magical and toxic plants. The shamans of the Maya have used Styrax to treat leprosy.
As an incense, Styrax repels insects and flies. Besides that, it strengthens your self confidence and gives you positive energy and feelings. It releases you from emotional tensions, clears out hysteria and paranoia and works harmonising against irritation and anger.

I wanted to bring out the deep mysterious and yet bright attributes of the incense Styrax that's why it is so dark.

I can't believe it is done! This picture occupied my time for almost one full week. Well, it was mostly about figuring out which colours I can use best and how much detail I want to put in. In the end I detailed every single scale on his body and made the contrast sharper by using hard shadows. I nearly didn't use any reference except for the last part, which is the lower and softer skin of the neck. For this I used a picture of a comodo varan. Those are the real dragons and still amaze me. Besides that, they are a really good reference for scales.

I hope you like it! The original size is 3543 x 2399 pixel and coloured 100% in Photoshop CS.
For the background, I used brushes from [link] Check them out, they are amazing. I don't know how long it took me. It was about 5 days of hard work. But it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to start with the next one, Dammar.

Later, when the entire series is done, I want to publish them in a book which contains the prints of the paintings as well as the sketches and full descriptions.
The sketch for Styrax can be seen here: [link]

Oh BTW, I know the mistakes and flaws in this picture. But since I love the colouring and detailing so much I really would love you to just overlook and ignore them. Somehow I'm too weak to handle critique today. Thanks a lot for looking anyway! <3



Copyright 2008 Claudya Schmidt. Please do not alter, copy, use or redistribute. Thanks!