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Fan art by Me - Wheel of Time - Rand

Updated version 6 Feb 26

My second Wheel of Time fan art – it’s Rand the bloody dragon al’Thor! He looks way too fucking fancy.

And I’m finished with it! As always by finished I mean that I’m fed up with it and can’t tell what’s good or not anymore. I’ve been staring at it too long!

This was a NIGHTMARE to paint (Galad gave me way less trouble). Not only do I hate painting fabric folds, the fiddly details on this were FIDDLY. I’ll admit, I didn’t hand paint any of the embroidery on the coat (used texture overlays instead), or the dragon belt buckle. And I just HAD to include Callandor after it seemed like there were so many Callandor fans after I posted my test image.

Rand has never been one of my favourites, but since he’s the main guy, I wanted to do him justice. I do apologise to all the Rand stans out there, but on my first reading of the books, Mat was my favourite and Rand’s chapters were just filler before I could get another Mat chapter. Sorry!

WoT fanart character portraits collection by me so far:

WHEEL OF TIME PORTRAIT COLLECTION: Galad - Clean - Dirty Rand - Clean (you are here) - Dirty

I'm going to make this a series, I think! Because it's fun to create things for the fandom!

So let’s talk about my artistic choices for Rand!

**POTENTIAL MINOR BOOK SPOILERS BELOW**

(don’t read the text below if you want to avoid spoilers, but do scroll down without reading if you want to see a Rand version without Callandor)

MY ARTISTIC CHOICES (canon corrections welcome)

UPDATE - I knew I'd do this. I looked at the image again after posting and thought the face was a bit off and couldn't live with how his hair looked. So, I've updated the images in this post, but I've realised that won't update any reblogs (I'm new to tumblr and didn't understand how reblogs work). Hopefully people will come to the original here and see the improved version. Here's a comparison of new and old:

Rand is depicted a lot in his classic red and gold coat, sometimes with black cuffs and sometimes without, and seems to appear in a frilly poet’s shirt most often too. The official cover art is what I’ve based my version of Rand on so there’s not much to comment on there. I think red is an iconic colour for him because of the Michael Whelan A Memory of Light cover art, and the Darrel K Sweet cover for The Fires of Heaven.

I couldn’t stand (painting) the frilly shirt and sort of regret going in that direction since I hate painting fabric folds and frilly shirts are nothing but fabric folds! So I didn’t bother to work on it more to make it look better than it does – it is what it is!

I went though a few versions of the coat – there was another where the collar was red and pointed rather than the black military cut, and a few versions of the shirt with different shaped frills.

I didn’t spend much time at all on his pants so they’re not very refined.

The belt buckle is based on the one Aviendha gifts Rand after she has to destroy her spears when she becomes a Wise One’s apprentice – iirc it’s described as dragon shaped with gold inlay. I got SUPER LAZY with this because all the coat /shirt nonsense burned me out, so this a shamelessly ripped photo edit of the actual dragon that appears on the gates to Robert Jordan’s house. I was going to make the buckle rectangular with the dragon embossed on it, but I think the passage in the book actually describes it as “dragon shaped”, so that’s what I went with.

I can’t remember what happens to this belt buckle in the books, so if anyone knows, please let me know!

The dragon tattoos are as accurate as I could imagine based on the book text. Rand describes them as having gold manes, and gold and red scales and wrapping around his forearms with the dragon heads on the backs of his hands. They are metallic looking, but feel no different from his normal skin when he touches them. Again, these dragons are styled after the official dragon banner style dragon (also seems to be the same as the gate dragon). I’m not sure I got them looking quite “natural”. Maybe they stand out a bit much? They were going to be the original focal point of this portrait, but I realised a bit late how badly they clashed with the red coat. The decision to add the black collar and cuffs was intended to insert a visual barrier between the end of the coat sleeves and Rand’s forearms so there wasn’t so much red next to red (also the cuffs saved me from having to paint more stupid sleeve folds).

Adding Callandor was an afterthought – I’d already chosen Rand’s pose – he was meant to be pushing up his sleeves to show his tattoos, but then I did a test pic of Callandor and people seemed to like it, so I decided to awkwardly tweak the pic to have the sword that is not a sword included. I used the exact same version from the test scribble, because I was way too fed up to try drawing a better one! Sorry! Maybe in the future I’ll do one of Rand actually holding it!

The made up loop to connect Callandor to Rand's belt is loosely based on some sword belts I've seen, but to be honest I was just lazy and wanted a slack ass quick way to add the sword.

Here’s the version of Rand without Callandor, which was my original intention for the portrait. The coat was already fully painted when I decided to include the sword, so the coat folded back and belt loop were added later on different layers so I could shoehorn Callandor in there.

I just couldn’t get his hair quite sitting right. I think I’ve been staring at it too long. The reference image had this really cool messy kind of hair style, but I’m not sure I got it right or made it look properly like its growing from Rand’s head!

Also couldn't be bothered working on the hand anymore, so it looks a bit rough.

I didn’t make Rand an orange ginger, or a red gold type of ginger. I distinctly remember passages in the Jordan books describing his hair as a dark red (while Sanderson incorrectly writes Rand’s hair as red gold – he doesn’t have the same colour hair as the Trakands!!) In my mind, dark red is a very dark brownish red, slightly orange, so that’s what I tried here.

Rand’s eyes are sometimes described as grey and sometimes blue iirc? So he’s got greyish blue eyes here.

I picked quite a handsome square jawed facial reference since Rand is supposed to be good looking – not as handsome as his brother Galad since people don’t comment about Rand’s looks incessantly like they do with Galad, but Rand is handsome enough that people do notice, and three women fall in love with him and are happy to share (and doesn’t Sevanna aka Batshit Aiel Not So Wise One, want to have babies with Rand and thinks he’s pretty?).

I think both of Tigraine’s sons are meant to be quite good looking, but I think Rand must take after Tigraine more (don’t people comment how he bears a resemblance to her? Plus the Aiel colouring from his dad?) while Galad takes more after Taringail (dark hair and eyes typical of Cairhien and Damodreds). The two of them must share some facial similarities, I imagine. I'll have to post the two images side by side. Might be nice to do an image of Rand and Galad together sometime, since we didn't get much payoff in the books with that whole half brothers plotline.

And I FELT CHEATED. SO BLOODY CHEATED. Fucking Sanderson - I feel like he dropped that thread. I mean, why did Jordan even bother creating that familial relationship to just do nothing with it? I think it was meant to go somewhere considering all the foreshadowing and information we got about the Royal Line of Andor and Tigraine's disappearance. And then there's Galad himself - a background character that stands out because of his looks and sword skill who then becomes a POV character? Don't you think it would have been nice to see Rand Vs Galad with their Blademaster badassness? Not necessarily as enemies, but somehow those two needed to fight with swords. Like Toram Riatin did with Rand! Or how Tam was sparring with Rand. I feel like there should have been some sort of meeting between Rand and Galad where their family ties are revealed - probably Rand telling Galad since Galad was clueless right up until they're in the middle of the Last Battle and a dying Gawyn spills the goss. i would have LOVED to see how Galad's rigid moral code coped with having Rand for a brother, and how Rand dealt with a sudden big bro in his life. Rand grew up thinking he was an only child after all. Did he ever wish for siblings? We know Galad loves his siblings. Would he have loved Rand too? Galad is used to the big brother role after all. Wasted storyline - BUT I DIGRESS.

I didn't add much texture to Rand's face or any stubble because I wanted him to look younger than my version of Galad. Galad is between 6 - 9 years older than Rand, I think? I know the WoT Companion has everyone's year of birth, but it's sometimes inconsistent with what's actually in the books. At one point, Galad was said to be around Nynaeve's age, and she's 26 iirc. Rand is 18 - 20? So this Rand is supposed to look like a fresh faced young man. There are images online oft Jordan's alleged facial references for his characters, and Ben Affleck is there for Rand. My Rand looks a bit Afflecky if you squint, but honestly I had no solid image of the specifics of Rand's facial features and wasn't going to use a famous actor for it. Likewise with Josha Stradowski - I wanted to make a version of Rand that wasn't a one for one likeness of an actor. (Josha was a great Rand in the TV show! I wasn't sold on him for the first two seasons, but he really hit his stride in season 3 and won me over.)

I do have a “Dirty Version” of Rand coming when I’ve got more time to sit down and muck about with this portrait.

I have plans for more Wheel of Time character portraits. It’s been nice having something creative to work on without the pressure of it being my own creation (back in the day, I learned digital painting so I could paint my own RP OCs. I seldom did any Fanart. Painting my own characters was always so much pressure to make it good!)

Anyway! I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to this image and making small tweaks when I suddenly spot something that bothers me that I missed before.

Thanks for reading my ramblings if you made it this far, and stay tuned!