Artist reimagines legendary Pokémon as giants in gorgeous paintings

Something that's always bothered me about the Pokémon games is that, despite their immense power and status, legendary Pokémon have always felt quite small. Sure, they're listed as being fairly large in the Pokédex - and the game's name literally means pocket monsters - but I've often wondered what they would look like as vast mythical creatures.

Thankfully, an artist has managed to make my dreams come true: and the paintings she's produced are simply stunning.

Created by 23-year-old independent artist Devin Elle Kurtz (also known as TamberElla), the digital paintings of Rayquaza, Giratina, Lugia, Palkia, Dialga, Kyogre and Groudon have been gaining a fair bit of attention on the internet over the past few days - and rightly so. The Pokémon are presented as massive creatures emerging from clouds, overshadowing entire cities, or troubling ships in a storm.

Just take a peep at them in cropped form below:

What I particularly love about these pieces, aside from their dark and otherworldly mood, are how the legendaries interact with the natural backgrounds. And, of course, the sheer sense of scale. Take a closer look and you'll spot details like a tiny Charizard in the foreground of the Groudon piece, or a small red plane circling below Giratina.

In fact, I'd say my personal favourites are the Dialga and Giratina paintings, in which the clouds and lighting resemble the techniques used by Romantic-era artists like J. M. W. Turner and John Constable (or so I'm told, having consulted Eurogamer's resident art expert Christian Donlan).

The images are stunning enough on Instagram, but I'd recommend viewing them in their full glory on the artist's DeviantArt page, where there's a black background and the paintings are uncropped.

Maybe it is a good thing, after all, that legendaries aren't quite this large in the games. I think even a Master Ball would struggle to contain them.