Illustration Friday: Wings

Amazing that the picture I've been working on actually fits for this week's Illustration Friday Topic.  How often does that happen?  (answer: never) I'm not really satisfied with it.  I didn't do the wings right (or at least the one on the left).  I wasn't impetuous about this either--I made sketches, I had it all mapped out.  It actually sat for a couple weeks while I contemplated it. After I was "done" (see the version below) I thought it might be better to not have it there at all, but alas, that's not right either.......

Angels were depicted playing nyckelharpa in churches, on old tapestries in Sweden.  Devils played the fiddle.  Why should one instrument be considered the Devil's instrument, and others belong to angels?  Why is the harp considered a heavenly instrument?  Is it because it is impossible to make a raucous sound on it?  People like raucous sounds, though.  As far as fiddling and the Devil goes, my impression is that they're associated because fiddlers become obsessed with it.  All they want to do is play and play, and not work at all.  Also, fiddlers play dance music, and everyone knows that the Devil is behind dancing.  But the nyckelharpa players I know are just as obsessed as the fiddlers, and are just as likely to prompt unrestrained dancing.

Illustration Friday: Myth

I made eight of these dancing couples (all different) for a project I'm doing, silhouettes with the gouache resist with india ink, and this is the last one, where, when I started running it under warm water to wash off the gouache, it developed such a cool pattern that I had to stop and let it dry, just like this.  It makes me want to redo all the others to see if I can get a similar effect (though it's not what I need for my project).

This feels mythic to me.  Dance feels mythic.  Primal.  And this somehow for me catches some of that nature.

"Skewed" Sketch

It's been awhile, but I still think there is some value in doing these, although I'm reluctant to try to put it into words.  But since I have a little bit of time at work, I might as well be doing some of these, since they don't take very long.

What I really wish was that I was making progress on my bigger projects.....

Neck wrinkles

In case you couldn't tell, this is a picture about necks.....which I find fascinating.  I hope this makes it easier as I get older myself, my fascination with wrinkles.  I wonder if I should make a tag for wrinkles.  I've sure done a lot of pictures about them.

Swan #7

More swans....yikes!

Can I be done with swans yet?

I don't know.  I don't think so.

I started this a couple days ago, but then finished it while talking on the phone to a friend who has moved hundreds of miles away.

Traditional Swan

So here's a swan with traditional media.  It's bigger than my scanner on all sides (front, back and top), so alas, this is cut off.  I wasn't going to post it, but I've been looking at it for four or five days, and have been liking it, so it seems an appropriate first post of 2013.

I hope this is an art-filled year.  Art is cheap, compared to other things I could be doing.  I mean, once you've bought art supplies, of which I have tons, you can keep busy for decades.