Hello,
Today I'm going to share a project I've been working on over the past few months. I think I actually started it at the end of 2020, but I've worked on it on and off since then and it's now finally complete! I had an idea in my head for a while beforehand about creating a series of illustrations that would work together as a distinct set. I'd also had the idea about doing something around Greek mythology for a while. It's a subject I find interesting and I wanted to embark on a project where I would learn. I decided to create the images of the 12 main Olympian Gods. I thought this would be a project that would be achievable (12 illustrations), but also would be long and involved enough to be a challenge. I stopped and started many times, worked on other things in-between, almost threw in the towel on a number of occasions but I did persevere and I'm really happy I did.
I set a few style and image parameters from the start. Each illustration would feature the full length figure and would include some of their attributes drawn in black and white. I wanted a uniform colour palette and I wanted it to link to the ancient pots, vases and plates which I always loved looking at from museum trips and photographs, so I chose rich red brown and yellow ochre/raw sienna to be the accompanying colours.
I'm really happy with how they've turned out. I haven't done too much figure drawing over the past years so that was something I was keen to work on and was another part of the challenge. I spent a lot of time especially early on, going back and forth abandoning images and re-creating them, but I definitely found once I'd created a few more finished illustrations I got into my flow, (as tends to happen) and I started to speed up and see consistency in the images. I hope you enjoy my take on a selection of the Greek Gods! Here they are in no particular order :).
