Clutching Power

This is a piece I started a number of years ago, and then put aside because I felt it was lacking something. A few months ago, while I was in a creative slump, I pulled it back out and began playing around, hoping it would help unblock me to work on something I'd already started (since starting something from scratch was the problem).

This piece was originally supposed to depict one of the sorcerer-kings of Athas from D&D's Dark Sun campaign setting, but as I worked on it, it became this skeletal, lich-like figure clutching a sorcerous ball of energy instead. For those not versed in such things, a "lich" is a wizard who has given up his life for immortality through magical means, and become undead.

While painting the figure, I imagined some of the lines and bits stuck to it were circuitry rather than bone or jewelry -- which would make it a "techno-lich", a wizard kept alive by some weird combination of sorcery and circuitry.