Mother of Grendel Grief-Wracked and Ravenous (Beowulf Series image 2 of 3)

Part two of my Beowulf series. This is the second battle Beowulf has in the epic, where he faces off against the mother of Grendel. Unlike the first piece, I wanted this one to depict the heat of the battle. I wanted Beowulf struggling to fight to show that even he can not handle the wrath of Grendel's mother.

I also really wanted to get that fierce emotion across of Grendel's mother. To show how much she loved her son as her love was turned into unmitigated rage against his killer.

Unlike Grendel I wanted to depict his mother with a slightly more humanistic appearance to make her a bit more sympathetic. For even Beowulf says that unlike the beast Grendel he can understand that Grendel's mother had to do what she did to avenge her kinsman.

Since Grendel's mother is said to look like that of a water demon I thought what if I combined a naga or serpent creature with that of a merrow and have a serpentine tail but with a fish fin. I figured this would work for how she travels on land and sea. The text also describes her as a sea-wolf and I wanted to play up that fusion. So I gave her aquatic features such as; fins, hand-webbing, and gills. I then also gave her the wolf-like features of her wolfen eyes, fur covered hands, and large mane.

This was really fun to create, I really enjoyed playing with the design Grendel's mother.

As always this was created in Corel Painter.