Boss Battle!

Dear Muse, I have other WIPs to finish. Please stop making me start new drawings. Love, Hex.

The "little" pinkish dragon at the top is Xeari, the main character of one of my oldest stories ever, Tales of Kenah. She definitely does not start off nearly this badass. And she's actually at least 2m tall, or nearly 7 feet. The original backstory was that she used to be human, then she got warped onto this planet named Kenah and transformed into a mutant dragon. She wasn't exactly happy about this. Not sure how much I like this idea anymore, so I'm thinking on that.

The big shadowy dragon is currently named Cymrae, but that's up for debate now as I feel somewhat more self-conscious about stealing the Welsh word for Welsh (which is Cymraeg, if you want to be specific) now that I'm in the UK. I don't think he's particularly Welsh. Originally I drew him waaay too big and then I had to shrink him down, which is why his lines are so light and thin in this even though you can't tell this zoomed out. He's still supposed to be huge. Just... well, ToK is meant to be a webcomic, and you gotta fit things into panels, y'know? I'll probably make a size comparison chart of my various dragon characters later.

Cym is the reason Xeari got warped to Kenah in the original story; there's a sort of prescribed lifespan for all dragons and when a dragon is born, another one dies and gives its soul to the new dragon. But when Cym was meant to die he refused, and (for reasons I haven't figured out) he survived the struggle with the reaper. So now the balance is all fucked up and someone's got to go put him in his place. Cue the Chosen One, Xeari. Cym is old, even for a dragon. Dragons tend to live to be at least a thousand or two, but even after maturing they grow slowly over time, so he's a pretty big guy for his species (different dragon species come in different sizes). I have lots of interesting concepts floating around in my head regarding the whole soul-balance thing, but I guess it'd be considered spoilers so I shall say nothing here.

I drew Xeari and her companions in black and white for the longest time before picking colours, at which point anything I put on them seemed wrong. So I arbitrarily picked a dull red and now she looks weird in anything else. It's something of a happy coincidence that this forces me to make Cym a complementary green, like classic dragons of old, but they don't call him the Dark Dragon for nothing. When I paint this properly I want him to be all shadowy-wispy and stuff. This version is just a sketch and a colour mock-up.

The background is just whatever, really. Been inspired by various fantasy paintings and their misty-foggy backgrounds, though I'll probably have to go hunt some down later to do this properly as it's all from my (admittedly terrible) memory.

They speak Welsh in Argentina?!

- Hex