Lyra Silvertongue, King Iorek Byrnison and Pantalaimon from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials are three of the greatest characters in fiction. In our house we loved them as we read these extraordinary books and missed them once we’d finished. I’ve wanted to paint them from the moment I read them, but it’s taken all these years to get around to giving myself permission. Of course now that I’ve started I’ll have to do more. Need to do a larger one of Lyra and Pan especially. Painting them at this size doesn’t do them justice but it’s a nice start don’t you think?

A note on the throne: I used runes from a Viking coffin stone. I used them for the ancient feel although the words are actually not relevant to Iorek. The whale iconography above Iorek’s head is my imagining of what the mythical creatures for such bears to be.