“Baylon the Black Panther was the illegitimate son of the last Rainforest Emperor. After being exiled with his mother Savala into the Desert, he and his mother established a base of power and local authority at an oasis, where Baylon studied the arts of magic. Upon the death of his father, Baylon rallied his supporters and, armed with his magic and a thirst for the power his birth denied him, he invaded the Rainforest and usurped the throne, declaring himself Emperor.
But the Rainforest could not slake the young panther’s ambition. He turned his eyes to the Savanna, under the leadership of King Edwar the Lion, the High King of the Savanna. After aggravating a territorial dispute between a clan of Buffalo and Wildebeests, Baylon declared his support for the Buffalo and used it as a pretext to invade the Savanna. When Edwar rallied the Savanna tribes, he met Baylon at the bend in the main river cutting through the Savanna. There, from the opposite side of the river, Baylon unleashed his magic, setting the tall grass on fire and driving the Savanna warriors into the water. Those who didn’t drown or fall to the crocodiles faced an uphill struggle against the Rainforest warriors, lead by Baylon himself. In the end, many valiant warriors were captured and enslaved, sent to work in the quarries that supplied the stone for Baylon’s building projects. Among those captured was Edwar himself, whom Baylon gave as a spoil of war to his mother to torment and torture at her pleasure.
However, Baylon’s plans to colonize the Savanna met fierce opposition from Edwar’s son Leo, and the constant harassment and guerrilla attacks on the colonists, patrols, and supply lines made the endeavor unpopular in the Rainforest. Baylon was forced to raise taxes and force his citizens into the Savanna against their will. Protest and outrage lead to riots in his capitol, and Baylon found himself increasingly resorting to violence, torture, and executions of his political opponents to quell the tide of opposition. He also faced multiple assassination attempts, at which point he took into permanent service as his bodyguards his two most loyal supporters, the leopardesses Pina and Nuria.
As his position became more precarious, Baylon unleashed a terrible campaign of destruction and slaughter in the Savanna, culminating in his ultimate showdown with Prince Leo at the Battle of the Sands.”
This was a very difficult picture. I stretched myself a lot and tried some more difficult things. Baylon’s pose was a stretch in my abilities as an artist, and at one point I accidentally erased him. But I was able to recreate the pose and his face almost exactly, which means that my imagination is growing stronger and clearer. I also finally got over a bit of artist anxiety and admitted that Baylon just shouldn’t be alone in the picture—he should be depicted with Pina and Nuria. But my goodness, drawing two more figures made this project waaaaaaay more difficult than a simple portrait. And inking instead of just cleaning up a sketch was a new thing as well. And drawing Baylon’s fireball was a stretch too. And it’s still not a perfect picture.
But I’m never going to get better at art unless I take on new challenges, and I’ll never overcome perfectionism if I don’t allow the final product to have a few flaws. And overall, I’m proud of the final product and the effort and growth it represents.