The Dragon And The Tree Of Life – Original Art

Description

The Dragon And The Tree Of Life, by Phillip Ginn

This was a doozy. I’d penciled this piece back in March and I started the inks over three times before settling into the aesthetic I wanted. This took a long time, because I used very little brush and mostly use my Maru pen (Japanese crow quill nib) to create all the dark tones and gestures, reserving the brush only for areas needing true black.

I came up with this piece because, while reading a review of Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, there was reference to a dragon curled under the roots of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree Of Life. But, I’d processed the concept wrong and envisioned a tree taking root on a dragon’s head. Which is fitting because, as I continue to learn more about Daoism and take in mythology of old and from modern fiction, this piece embodies the concept of the unknown and the known, or mythology and reality, or heaven and earth existing together in life – however you’d like to interpret it.

So, this piece is the result of a serendipitous mistake.

Drawn on 11×17 Strathmore 500 2-ply Bristol board with a dip pen, brush, white gel pen, and Koh-I-Noor black drawing ink.