Earendil vs Ancalagon

Earendil the Mariner sets sail against Ancalagon, greatest and mightiest of the dragon host. This is a scene I wanted to draw for a very long time, and finally did so in 2025. All I knew about the composition at the beginning was that I wanted Earendils ship in the bottom left corner. Everything else came up while sketching stuff out, which took quite a lot of time. I sketched out and roughly designed Earendlis ship Vingiloth and the dragon Ancalagon in advance, as I knew there won‘t be much room to play within the process of illustrating, so I wanted to know as clearly as possible where I was going to head when I started the illustration itself. For Earendils ship I took much inspiration from sketches by John Howe but also by researching different ship types, of which the caravel felt like a fitting choice. I tried to keep some typical norse ship elements in the design though, like the shields displayed on the flanks and the one-sail only mechanic.