Dwarves and Armor

It's been a while. I haven't had a lot to present, although I draw as often as I can. Today is special, though. My players are just about to set off on a quest that will bring them into contact with the dwarves of the western mountains. As such, I've had dwarves on the mind and I've been sketching them out quite a bit.

In my world the dwarves were introduced to the world quite late, later even that humans, although their race is much older than the race of men. They lived underground for centuries, thriving, building vast kingdoms beneath the earth. It was not until the Black Tyrant began digging his great mines that dwarves at last beheld the outside world. Their culture had plenty of time to develop independently, which is why I decided a while ago that I wanted the dwarves' culture to be quite different from the cultures of the regions their mountains inhabit.

Tolkien created a lot of staples in fantasy. One of them is dwarven masked helmets. I'll probably be breaking a lot of traditional dwarven staples, but this is not one of them. For one thing, I think masked helmets are super awesome. For another, it fits with my conception of dwarven warfare (fighting in tunnels with no light means not a lot of reason for having open faced helmets). Originally I went for a "tribal" look. While I rather like it, I wasn't completely satisfied.

I tried a lot of different ideas. I had decided I really liked the lamellar plates, so I was sticking to eastern looks, but didn't like any of the results. I decided, "Whatever, I'll try it with a viking ocular helmet."  Which pretty much became the basis for the final design. I tried incorporating Central Asian elements into the final look of the helmet.

Overall, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Cheers.