“Fresh From a Battle” Orc Girl Illustration

The story behind this illustration and where the inspiration for it came from is that the general perception of orcs in stories, folklore and movies is as barbaric and somewhat unattractive humanoid looking creatures with evil , especially the way they are portrayed in Lord Of The Rings books and movies. Even the word “orc” has its roots in folklore and is connected to the Latin word Orcus which means deity of the underworld. All of that is highlighting the dark, evil and ugly characteristics of those fantasy creatures.

On the other hand there are some stories of orcs which say that they are creatures of nature who live their whole lives respecting nature and using shamanic magic. In those stories they are great warriors as well, very ruthless too, but not because of the wish to conquer and kill, but to protect the nature.
This is why I wanted to create this character. An orc female, at the same time having distinctive orcish features such as green skin, orcish bottom teeth and tattoos but with a twist of beauty in them. On the sides there a Viking runes, the left one is a symbol for a warrior and the left one is a symbol for protection which I wanted to make her look like she’s a skillful warrior but also a protector, with no evil inside of her and no barbaric wish to kill and runes on both of her sides help showing that.

I hope you will like a creative twist on creating a illustration of a creature that has been considered evil and barbaric for so long and hopefully it will inspire you to recreate characters and creatures using a slightly different point of view of them and try to explore different sides of everything around us.

Much love. <3