JAMES THE WARLOCK

This is one of my Dungeons and Dragons characters. Short backstory:

James, once a humble wooden stool within the halls of a wizard school, underwent a profound transformation at the hands of an audacious young student of magic and the enigmatic God of Chaos. Driven by a quest for existential understanding, he developed an insatiable hunger for power, yearning to preserve his existence through the mystic energies of the Shadow Realm.

I wanted to make a boring character that went by James Brown and then fail. He became one of my favorites and I was able to see him grow to becoming a strong Warlock.
I began to draw him for my binder cover, but I didn’t feel satisfied with how it turned out. So, I began again and took my stylus, and just went nuts in Photoshop. As you can see, I was just exploring, allowing myself to ‘fail’ and see what came out of it. Once I was happy with where it was going, I cleaned it up getting it ready for some inking.
The final piece shows my idea of this warlock who was once a child now a young adult. I wanted to show the amount of dark power pouring out of him as he was losing himself to the Shadow Realm. This magic is unnatural, especially for him, that it was taking his hands and his eyes to a wooden charcoal state.
I had lots of fun designing this character and playing with him. I’m glad he didn’t die so I can have more adventures with him. James, once a stool, turned into a real boy, who became an angsty teen and is becoming a powerful warlock forging his own path far beyond his roots.