Mizuchi Of The Great Waves

My contest-entry for s Contest about Japanese Mythos.

About as last-minute of an entry as it gets, I suppose
But considering I pumped this up in just about 2 days, I'm kicking off the year with something I'm proud of XD


The contest was all about picking a Deity, God/Goddess or Creature from the Japanese Folklore. And, if you know just a fraction about eastern myth, you know there's a lot to choose from.
In fact, choosing was about the hardest part here. I was pending between several options, like:
- Kuchisake-onna (or any other of the -onnas/ghost-women; though it would have ended up with an excuse to draw just another busty girl, lol)
- Nue (Eastern equivalent of a manticore)
- Orochi (the epic, 8-headed snake; but would probably have taken up too much time to draw)

Though ultimately, I really wanted to draw a dragon, so that made things easier.
Mizuchi is a large and fearsome water dragon (sometimes also considered a River God), demanding human sacrifices. Some Sources also depict him as the same water spirit that would later be know as the Kappa. That, or at least both of them originate from the same myth.
In my take, I wanted to elaborate a bit on the idea that he is a river god, so he is actually creating rivers from the water that constantly pours out of his body (notice the waterfalls in the background).

Stylistically, I was aiming for something similar to what George Kamitani/Vanillaware presented in their game "Murasama" (namely this - Gotta love the dragons they put in their games ^^>. Other than that, the background was inspired by famous Japanese artist Hokusai. Surely, you've seen his famous painting "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" at some point.



I also added an alternative version with inverted background (so it's basically dark-blue night-sky) to my scraps, if anyone is interested:




First time in a while that I put my colored pencils to use to add some shading and additional color, mostly to the dragon scales. The rest is all in ink and watercolor.
Blue and Yellow also seems like a color combination I don't use too often.