Zhang Fei

Here is the second of the three participants in the Oath of the Peach Garden: this time, the notorious general Zhang Fei, the drunken skillful warrior...

Gog, from the land of Magog (or vice versa)

Unfortunately, we can not make the large explanation that this entry deserve, because of lack of time; only a few words, no more.

The legendary land of Magog and his king, Gog, are mentioned in the Bible (Old Testament), also in the Quran and in islamic tales, and (the most important) in the Alexander the Great legendarium. 

It is said that Gog was son of Japhet, one of the Noah´s sons whose descendants repopulated the earth after the Deluge; for ancient people, this dark kingdom, Magog (that is, literaly, land of Gog)), was inhabited by all sorts of barbarians who don´t follow the God´s Law - you know: they don´t respect hospitality, practicing canibalism, etc. -, and, for example, Flavius Josephus and other authorities interpreted that the offspring of Magog as the scythian people (nomads, id est, barbarians). Also, the historian Jordanes and the scholar Isidore of Seville connected the people of Magog to the goth people origins - and others found another connections to their own people´s origins...

By the passing of time, the perception of the legendary people of Magog as barbarians changed and saw them like cruel monsters; or saw the land of Magog as the last refuge to the pagan world who gradually dissapeared. In this manner, all the mythological creatures like fauns, cyclops, cynocephaly, blemmies or manticores, for example, could was found in the land of Magog.

The arabian tales narrated that Alexander the Great (or Dhul Qarnayn in other tales), during his years of conquest, arrived to the Magog land frontier, and horrified, he commanded the building of a great wall, in order to contain the monsters inside. It said that the wall will only fall with the coming of the Apocalypse...

Guan Yu

A quick sketch of a historic and literary character: Guan Yu, the wise general of Liu Bei; only a poor excuse to improve new technics...

(as usually, click the image to see with more detail)

The Ringwraith known as the Witch-King of Angmar

Just an improvisation, followed by a little ornamental work (I spent more time on it than the rest of the work)...

Black Númenórean Ranger

About the tragic fate of the Kingdom of Númenor, also called Atalantë and Akallabêth, that Tolkien narrated in the fourth part of his Quenta Silmarillion; it says that the númenóreans (known by the elves as "high men", because they descend from the Edain, the firsts men that appeared in Middle Earth) was tricked by Sauron to abandon the (true) faith of Eru Ilúvatar and the Valar, and reject the Ilúvatar "Gift of Men" (that is, short lifes and mortality); thus, his last kings (influenced by Sauron lie) started a selfdestructive race to reach immortality that finally ends with the downfall of Númenor island by Ilúvatar himself, then removed Aman and the Hall of Mandos forever from the world, and, at last, He spherized the earth, that previously was flat...

From the survivors númenoreans families that stay loyal to the Valar and Elves, starts the lineage of the Dúnedain, the founders of Gondor; and from the few infidels númenoreans that survive, a festering resentment of Elves and Valar drives them to serve Sauron in the distant Mordor. For example, the infamous herald called "Mouth of Sauron" belonged to the númenoreans.

In the illustration, a re-imagined character who I like to think that he was not fall because of hate of Ilúvatar or Sauron lies, rather, he fall because of his strong sense of loyalty and honor; and now, he roams the Ithilien forest like a brown and silver living-shadow, not serving Sauron, not serving the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, and without any possibility of redemption...