"Thousands of years ago, in the primal age long lost, the world was overflowing with natural energy. Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre fought over that energy in endless, furious clashes."

[On Tumblr]

(Here is a little comparison between my older and more recent work.)

The promised pair for Dragon Ascent.
Dragon Ascent by ShadeofShinon

I have been anxiously waiting to get this one done and to complete the set. Well, not waiting, working. This piece was a lot of work and it was mostly very enjoyable. Not counting the last part, which was over an hour of editing the scan. I don't think I have ever struggled so much with editing a scan. Typically it takes me about 5-10 minutes to do it, but this one, oh no, not going to let me go so easily. It was mostly due to my scanners terrible disagreement with all yellow, orange and red colours, it just makes complete mush of them so I have to spend a lot of time and effort to make it look like in the original. This one is still slightly off, only slightly, but it is the best I could do.

A little background for this. Whenever I do Pokemon fanart inspired by the traditional Japanese art I do a lot of research on how things are portrayed and executed in the art. For this one my challenge was to find a way to portray not only Groudon but Kyogre as well. Rayquaza was fairly easy since its a serpentine dragon, which are a common subject.
Now, I know Bulbapedia says Kyogre is likely to be based on an orca, and a lot of you may agree, but for this one I only found whales in Japanese art, nothing orca-like, so I made the decision to portray Kyogre more like a whale here.
As for Groudon, it was more difficult. Based on a behemoth with more dinosaurian figure I just had to mix and match pieces of different creatures; dragons, oni, whatever I might find suitable. And I was actually positively surprised by the result! 

Overall I'm very happy with how this turned out. I hope deviantART doesn't turn the picture too dark, I fear it might do that.

I will be selling prints of this and Dragon Ascent in Tracon X next weekend!

I hope you like it!

Media Coffee | Cartiera Magnani Portofino watercolour paper | Pentel Japanese ink brush | Winsor & Newton inks
Time taken Approx. 15 hours

Pokemon c Nintendo Gamefreak
Art c ShadeofShinon

DoNotPlzUseMyArtPlz