For the record: No, I didn't have Phantom of the Opera in mind while drawing this.

This is a conceptual portrait of Ozgilliath Ironwing, the main troublemaker and (by far) most developed character in my fiction-in-progress based on Kenneth Oppel's Silverwing book series. I could go into quite a bit of detail about him, but I don't think I need to dump a reader's digest of information in this little Artist's Comments box.

Ozgilliath Ironwing (formerly Ozgilliath Silverwing), was exiled from the Silverwing colony before his first migration after not just killing but brutally mutilating Thanatos Silverwing, another newborn, before the eyes of the entire colony. Unbeknownst to the Elders, this massacre was not of Ozgilliath's will, but of the monster controlling him from a million universes away. (Mr. Smiley in the background.) The intentional, grotesque murder of a newborn by another was unheard of, and promptly dealt with by the elders. After his exile, it was made forbidden to even speak his name amongst the Silverwing colony for fear that it would bring back dark memories of the unspeakable bloodbath. Being the unnatural result of the pairing of a Silverwing and a vampire bat, Ozgilliath was never well liked within the colony to begin with.

After three years, while memory of him slipped to the back of the collective consciousness of the colonies, Ozgilliath assembled his own colony for bats that he deemed "unjustly shunned." With Ozgilliath as the High Administrator (they didn't work on a system of elders as Ozgilliath viewed it to be an "obsolete method of leadership"), this new colony, the Ironwings, became the largest, most advanced, and most secretive colony of bats in the world.

I don't even think I'll go into his ultimate goal. That's another novel all on its own...and it would count as a spoiler, possibly.

Design-wise, I know it's silly for a bat to be wearing a mask, but he wears it to obscure the half of his face which is horribly contorted due to a rather...unfortunate birth defect. I guess that's what happens when a rabid Sanguivore and a heavily-experimented-on Silverwing try to get together. Personally, I'm drawn to his eyes, one of which is similar to that of the monster, if you notice. This is because Ozgilliath's left eye is the window through which the monster sees into the realm of existence. This explains the scar tissue barely visible on the left eyelid, from when Ozgilliath attempted to claw his own eye out. Genius and insanity or two sides of the same coin...

What a rant, eh?



Shut up, you didn't even read the whole thing.