Fan Art: Dune - Paul Atreides

I'm planning to do a full treatment of my own spin on Dune, and really nail it and do it right. But for now I had to just sketch this out and especially do some color- the color of the Spice-eyes is really a focus. I have a lot of things i want to change about this rendition of Paul already, but i figured after drumming up about 30 different iterations of him over many sketchbooks, i would just commit one i was trying a new drafting technique with to color and see what i learn. I already feel he looks too old (like, 31 instead of 17 or so). I need to reduce his chin. It juts. Oh, how it juts. He's supposed to be dried, chapped, and emaciated though, and prematurely aged from a hard desert life and all that. It was a fun tango.

Frank Herbert released Dune in 1965 and changed science fiction forever. His world is so vague, hardly described at all, yet so specifically unique. Slow-motion knife fights, God-worms worshipped by Bedouin-type people who've lived on a waterless sand world for millennia, super-trained people with mental and vocal and physical power that just barely surpasses the feasible. It was so richly done. Most of my favorite science fiction authors claim Herbert among their inspirations.

If you have not read this book, go and read it this spring. It is awesome.

Paul is such a fascinating character, i had to draw him, and will probably take a few more attempts. He's so heroic and terrifying at the same time, you're not sure if it's a good thing for him to triumph by the end. That ominous future lies before him. I love the characters' world of deadly, soulless efficiency, and the consequences and emptiness they feel as a result of it.