"I Have Come from Heaven to Stay Your Anger..."

Athena.

That is all.

"I Have Sung Storms to Sleep."

The Golden Age of American Illustration Show I took in at Pepperdine continues to put a bee into my bonnet. And if the stings are inspiration, then Sting me, by God, Sting ME!  Although arguably, a wasp would be more appropriate. I'd hate to think I make one decent piece and never get another dose.

In any event, the show had several pieces by two of my favorite pen & ink men: Charles Dana Gibson and Joseph Clement Coll. Master draughtsmen both, Gibson had a gift for beauty and elegance with a dose of humor under the veneer, and Coll...criminey...Coll wielded a pen more elegantly than most can wield a brush. In some ways, looking at their work in person could convince you to never fling ink again, but all too often, aiming for the stars helps you to fall in just the right range.

Having said all that, this piece was another inspired by classical mythology, in this case, the death of Orpheus. When the "father of all songs" failed to bring his beloved back from the Underworld, he was said to spurn all affection and was eventually ripped to pieces for it. (Although, as this is the internet, I feel compelled to mention that in some versions of the stories, he only spurned all women and turned to boys.)  His body floated down the Hebrus river with his lyre still playing a mournful tune that bummed all of nature out until he emerged into the sea and washed up on the coast of Lesbos. My drawing enters the scene there, as a bather discovers the musician's remains.

The Fall of Nessus

This piece was just returned to me after having show in two consecutive shows, one in Los Angeles and the next in Seattle, as part of two group shows. 

The Seattle Show was themed around mythology, and the first idea that popped into my head was the abduction of Hercules' wife Dejanira by the centaur, Nessus. The tale has been covered by a number of painters of the past, but I felt there was a dynamism missing from some of these earlier depictions.  So I decided to take a stab at it, and I'm proud to say that this was the result. 

Possibly my best forearm...

"Take Away Leisure, and Cupid's Bow is Broken..."

Not all cupids are alike.  Since the Hallmark-ization of Valentine's Day, we've come to think of cupid and cherubs as being pretty much indistinguishable, but that certainly hasn't always been the case. In the early Judaic tradition, cherubs were the fearsome four-winged guardians of the throne of God, and that's pretty much how they remained until the Renaissance.  Oh, the Renaissance, the whirlpool of art, blending the sacred and the profane. However, little, chubby winged babies weren't always cherubs either. If they were in a religious painting, they were cherubs. If they were in a mythological or scene from antiquity, they were called putti, which meant "little men" (putto is the singular). Cherubs were usually innocent and reverent, putti were often cheeky little imps. If it's got nekkid people in it, the winged babies are putti. As for Cupid himself, his image changed over time.  In antiquity, he started off as a slender youth, but over time became more and more the chubby baby. While he always had wings, the quiver and bow were later additions. In medieval times, he was sometimes depicted as blindfolded (ie. "love is blind")...and then the Renaissance...and then poof, modern day's lack of attachment to our iconographic history has rendered them one and the same.

"Cupid is a knavish lad, Thus to make poor females mad..."

As it's the month of February, I thought that I might do a tribute to Eros, more famously known as Cupid. Though the lesser god of love to his more famous mother, Aphrodite/Venus, Eros more thoroughly made it into the iconography of the popular consciousness. So it's a week of winged archers in honor of the approach of Valentine's Day.

Hide Your Wife...

Centaurs...always running off with people's wives. Nessus ran off with Deianeira. To those of you who only know Hercules from Steve Reeves or...ahem...Lou Ferigno, Deianeira was Herc's main squeeze. Naturally, Herc shot Nessus with an arrow as he ran off with her across a river. While dying, Nessus told Deianeira to take some of his blood, and to give it to Herc if she ever thought he was being unfaithful. Well, bright girl that she was, she later smeared it all over one of Herc's robes...and only after sending him off did she notice that the blood caught fire when hit by the sun. Herc, of course, not one to go down without a fight, tried to put out the flames, jumped in the water (which only made it worse), and tried to rip it off...taking his skin and organs with it. Before dying, he tossed the servant that gave him the robe into the sea.

The Moral of the Story: Don't use centaur's blood as sunscreen unless you want your husband anything above medium rare.