Earthsea: Coming Home

I finished it!!!!! :happy dance:

It's been a looooong time coming - number 13 in the Earthsea - ahem, "Fantastic Journeys" series. I started this image before I had the exhibition in August 2010, so it's taken me about two years (on and off, of course).

Realizing that I had no images representing Gont, Ged's home island, I thought I ought to do something about it. This is the very last scene of "The Farthest Shore" - picked up again in "Tehanu". Ged, having lost his wizarding power when he fixed the gap in the Underworld where magic was leaking out of the world, gets a ride on the dragon Kalessin's back, who deposits him back on Gont, near Re Albi where he was a wizarding apprentice to old Ogion - and right at the feet of Tenar, whom he left with Ogion all those years back.

This is only hinted at in "The Farthest Shore", but one of the central scenes in "Tehanu", so I guess this makes this illustration the only one I've done for "Tehanu", which is my favorite book in the series -- but just for convenience's sake, and since it is unlikely I will be doing more, I'll group it under "The Farthest Shore".

I now officially have enough images for that calendar I was planning to make, all those years back ... there is one more painting in the works, another one of Gont, from the beginning of "A Wizard of Earthsea" this time -- so they'll bracket the series nicely.

I have another exhibition coming up at the end of the year - at the new Events Centre in Carterton - so that'll provide the needed kick in the behind to finish that last painting, too!

Oil on canvas

Earthsea, and all character, place and dragon names therein, belong to Ursula K Le Guin and her legal representatives. The visual interpretation thereof, however, entirely belongs to myself.