THE ARC OF JOHAN EGERKRANS
“Dragons don’t need to make sense in a biological way,” says Johan Egerkrans. After all, he reminds us, Smaug is a hundred metres long and has the wingspan of a jumbo jet, if you were to draw The Hobbit’s fire-breather with any sense of realism. “You can’t do it convincingly, it’s a fantasy creature.”
With that comment, Johan states his admiration for those artists who do create fantastical creatures from their imagination; he cites Terryl Whitlatch as an influence. “That vein of creature design has also crept in, of course,” says Johan, “but I try not to make them as biologically sensible.”
Johan’s new book Drakar, or simply Dragons in its English translation, is out now in his native Swedish and an English language edition is due this year. Drakar is the artist’s eighth illustrated book, and follows
