Edwardian Magus

Edwardian Magus, 2010. Corel Painter XI, Photoshop and hand sketch.

This was entered into a little weekly challenge called 'Character of the Week' from a great website called Conceptart.org. Here is they write up they did for it:

London, England 1907. Cyril Grey is the leader of the ‘Order of Shining Starres’, an occult organisation that aims to become the most dominant in Britain. Grey has access to some of the darkest forces of the astral realm, and demands complete devotion from his acolytes. He is a man obsessed and committed to the promulgation of his black bible, the Book of Regulation, or Liber Ordinatio said to have been dictated to him by a messenger from the gods that provided to him his magical motto, Sit Vis Vobiscum. He has inherited wealth, independence, and apparent youth; appearing little over 35. But there is talk that he is older and uses a ‘glamour’ to fool his followers. There is also talk of the wealth running out, and debts beginning to mount up; of pretenders to his position, and of... murder. Dark murder, as prominent figures in the occult underworld start to... go missing...

Design Grey in his ceremonial robes of office. Consider the historical period (Edwardian) and setting. Also consider his apparent age and powerful persona, and try to present that in your design.

The character was designed around a drawing I found from a sporty edwardian advertisement. After reading the prompt I couldn't help but to think about the Warhammer Universe and their designs for the magus type. They use bird/ eye motifs for their design; so I picked a theme around bull/ stars. Since the character is supposed to be older than his youthful appearance suggests, I made his exposed hand look wizened.