All right, I will admit that the reason that there hasn't been a blog post here for far too long is because last week was just plain weird. One of those weeks were the routine was thrown out of the window at the beginning of the week and then didn't return for the next ten days. O.K. technically the last week and a half has been weird but you understand what I'm trying to say (I hope).
I've only just about managed to regain routine from Wednesday onwards this week so I've had a fun time trying to catch up with all the work that wasn't done last week. Still I'm just about climbing on top of it now (how come it looks as tall a Everest from the bottom and not so big from the top?) and I have another possible contract coming in but it is rather like a competition in that there are several artist looking to land the job and I need to send my pencil sketch to the judge to see if I land the spot. Still I have a deadline of January next year but I'd rather get it done quick so that the judge can see that I'm committed to the project.
Sometime in life timing is everything. You know the schools that stopped sports day because it 'wasn't fair on the losers', well I'm sorry to tell you kids but once you are out in the nasty world of work, everything is basically a race and you have to run harder and faster than everybody else on the track. Whether we like it or not the word 'competition' rules the day.
Granted that is why I'm now self-employed as an artist and an authoress, because there was no way that I was ever going to be able to run fast enough to beat the others in the competition for a 'normal' job (curse you co-ordination difficulties). However, just because I knew that I was going to fall flat on my face in that race didn't stop me racing. Instead, I found a race where I had more of a chance of my strengths being able to carry me through rather than my weaknesses tripping me up.
So saying, the work on 'Mulo's Son, Morrigan's Daughter' is coming along well. Granted today it took me nearly an hour to paint her boots. What comes of having to work double hard at your co-ordination and need to make it exactly right so that the boots look like black leather but you can still see the shape of one leg in front of the other. Heads up to those reading this, I work with traditional paint brush and paper and I do not intend to shift into digital media. This is because I can neither afford to buy the sort of software needed to produce the sort of quality expected and also if I spend too many hours, too many days running staring at a computer screen I wind up with serious conjunctivitis. I'm an artist, risking my eyes working with a media that puts an undue strain on them is just stupid.
Any way, to give you a heads up one what to expect from this painting, I'm branching out into studying the myths and legends of Europe.
The Mulo's Son comes from the Romany legends of the Mulo (Muli if it was female). From what I have read I think these creatures are where we gained the legends of the Gothic vampires. The original vampires of European legend were seriously ugly, think a befanged Lord Voldemort and you've just about got the picture. The Mulo however were extremely handsome and seductive as that was how they hunted. The Mulo fed, through shall we say, intimate contact with their prey (cough blush). However, if the victim survived the draw on their life energy then they could produce a half breed child, blessed and cursed with the strengths and weaknesses of both races, one of those weakness being that they need extra life energy only, not being pure supernatural, they had to access it by drinking blood straight from the vein. The flip side strength was that they were unearthly beautiful, like their supernatural parent.
The other reason I think that the Mulo/Muli were the ancestors of the Gothic vampires is because the original vampires couldn't change their shape, where as the Mulo/Muli could, the two favourite alter forms being a very large wolf or a truly gigantic bat.
Interesting enough Mulo/Muli children were considered to be the most dangerous of all the undead as the only way to kill a Mulo/Muli was to find its grave and pour a libation of hot oil over it to complete the burial rights. Their half breed children, however, had no graves, therefore they could not be permanently killed. You could dismember them, burn them to ash and given enough time they could regenerate. Sprinkling the ash on running water used to speed up the process if anything as it gave the pieces something to move through. Rather recalls the Hammer Horrors Dracula's ability to keep coming back for one more round. That is the other thing, the greater majority of the Romany's settled in Ireland as it was the one European country where they weren't persecuted and Bram Stoker was Irish. Um, possible link there, wish I knew how to do the research to find out more.
Any way, back to the painting, I decided to combined the two alternative forms into a werewolf like creature only with six limbs, two of which are huge wings. Drawing the four arms with all the proper muscles in place was a decided challenge, even with an extremely good reference shot. It was fine up to the point were I had to deviate from the original to extend the spine to take the extra limbs, that was interesting.
The other character in the painting is, of course, the Morrigan's Daughter. The Morrigan was one of the Irish Celtic Goddesses of death. She was also known as the 'Chooser of the Slain', something akin to a Valkyrie as her birds, crows would fly over the battlefield and chose who would die. She could also take mortal lovers and is said to have born children for them. Apparently nearly all of her children were daughters with daughters running strong in the following bloodlines. However, these were not fair maidens suited for an ivory tower, these were warrior maids and shield maidens, more than capable of fighting alone side their friends in battle. It took a very strong and very brave man to be able to court a daughter of Morrigan, hence why in the painting she is carrying a drawn rapier.
Her costume I picked up from a short story that featured a Morrigan Daughter as one of the main characters as it fitted the Gothic tone and I just plain well liked the description. The only change I've made is that the cloak is only half length so that she didn't cover up all the details of the Mulo's Son behind her. I also liked the description of the costume because it made it blatantly obvious that she was a desirable women who was not afraid of her body but didn't neither was it 'everything on show' like many pulp fantasy female outfits are. I do not agree with the nudity of most fantasy artwork but I do appreciate a painting that shows a women as a strong equal to a man.
I decided that a Morrigan's Daughter would probably be the best 'beauty' to fit my 'beast' so I have painted them with complementary colour scheme that is the opposite of the back ground to make them stand out. There is only a little more work on the Morrigan's Daughter to do so I'm hoping to have her done by the end of the month. Once she's done I promise to put a post up here.
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