Overall

Vision Vision

Originality Originality

Technique Technique

Impact Impact

This piece is again a masterwork by the Color Wizard. The sort of fisheye-lens bend given to the perspective really encapsukates the scope and helps to convey themes of power, authority and perhaps a bit of opressiveness and tyranny. The dragon here acts well as the power behind the throne, the oligarch of influential persons, corporations and other appointees serving the dwarfed head-of-state, who in reality has much less of the power. This eternal conflict of politics is exemplified perfectly when you consider the range of gold colours used, which is both a colour associated with wealth and luxury as well as fire and power. The dragon embodies the idolization of power that the monarch posesses, rather than the power that he actually wields. It could also be that instead of being the monarch's personal dragon, that the king is the dragon's personal monarch, speaking for it to the people who live in what appears a harsh, dusty clime, which would certainly be a very interesting take on the piece and a brilliant way to look at it.While Chromamancer's work is impressive both from a visual and artistic perspective, some less impressive aspects which hold this piece back from being perfect must be mentioned for the sake of betterment. Many of Chromamancer's works, while toying with colour ranges, typically do lack colour contrast, and that can be seen here. Although an attempt was made with the inclusion of the steel and silver fashionings, as well as the bright reds which dot the "throne room", these seem to be added on more as an afterthought, partly due to their lack of shadows (speaking in particular about the dragon) and also due to the fact that they are so bright. While green and purple would most likely have not worked here, and adding any colour to the dragon's scales would have taken away from the effect, it would have been nice to see some counterbalance to the strong sense opression that comes from the piece, a light of hope to guide us through the opression, perhaps in the form of stained-glass reliefs in those arches, or a white sun — but then, I am probably missing the point.Despite all of that, though, this is still excellent work, and Chromamancer deserves every piece of praise he will surely get for it. I'm very glad I saw it.