The Mighty Stagoceros by ceaunul on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

The colour palette caught my attention.

At first glance, I thought the forest was on fire. More on that later.
So, there is a gradient from yellow to red to black starting from behind the stagoceros's head - both giving it an epic entrance (and a bit of a halo) as well as creating a contrast, making the rhino creature stand out from the background. Looks really cool.

Now, I could be mistaken, but I think that rhinoceroses don't have horns quite that narrow and long. This doesn't matter, because this isn't a rhinoceros. I just thought I would point it out. However, it looks like the horns aren't perfectly in the vertical middle of its face.
What is striking, of course, is that this creature has both horns and antlers - something highly unusual to find on the same animal. The main difference between horns and antlers is that antlers are shed every year. Which is interesting, because something like that seems to go on here; only that they dissolve in the air. Along with the light and the colours, my first thought was that there must be a fire, but of course there isn't.
In my opinion, and this, I see as a major problem with this image, this could be avoided by having a bigger version of this painting. I would have spotted the light rays easier, for example.

Moving on to the background. It looks great! Not much to say here, but I like the subtle details (and again, I wish the image were bigger). Same goes for the flower the stagoceros seems to sniff at - I love the way its shadow plays with the sun-rays around it.

Summary: Beautiful. Should be bigger to be as glorious and mighty as the stagoceros.

Commented on behalf of ProjectComment's 52 Week Comment Challenge.