Thursday, January 28, 2010

Guest Artist Gallery: Simon Fraser



Introducing the first installment of a new feature where some of today's most exciting artists lend us their own vision of a favorite god, monster or hero from Greek mythology. Leading the way in this inaugural edition is Mr. Simon Fraser, bringing us his beautiful depiction of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love.



Of his colored pencil drawing of Aphrodite above, he has this to say: "I based her on Anna Nicole Smith and a girl I knew at High School, both worked out that love was the way to get what they wanted."

Born in Scotland, Simon Fraser has lived in France, Italy, Africa, and even a strange and foreign land known as "Brooklyn". He's well known for co-creating the swashbuckling Nikolai Dante, a sci-fi anti-hero from a 27th century interstellar Imperial Russia, in the pages of the famous British comics weekly magazine 2000AD. Perhaps the second tallest member of the web comic collective known as Act-i-Vate, he launched the creator-owned sci-fi adventure strip Lilly MacKenzie there. Lilly's first adventure, Lilly MacKenzie and the Mines of Charybdis is currently in the process of being prepared for publication in Judge Dredd Megazine. In addition to his many comics related skills, Mr. Fraser knows the full name name of every dinosaur to ever exist,including ones not yet discovered by science, and knows instinctively where to find a decent bar no matter where in the world you may drop him off. He has an impressive collection of hats.


Can you draw, paint, operate a camera, sculpt, etc.? Have a desire to capture the essence of your favorite figure from Greek myth and see it pictured here on this site? Send me a scan of your work, a few words about yourself and the piece, and I'll put it up!

12 comments:

  1. LOVE this! Love!

    Can't wait to see what others are coming up with as well.

    xoxo -E

    ReplyDelete
  2. you said SKETCHES, O'Connor! not full on awesome mural art!

    i might have to pull my submission and draw it on the side of plymouth rock or sumthin'!

    great blog feature and your peekaboo mug in the title picture slays me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. All I can say is that Mr. Fraser must have been divinely inspired.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Funny pic of Aphrodite. Got to admit that's how I pictures her, except with a giant gold breastplate besparkled with gems (her girdle). Also, just wondering, are you planning on doing Eros and Psykhe in your APHRODITE? It's a fave of mine and I think you could do wonders with it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm definitely going to be doing Eros and Psyche in Aphrodite's book, though I'll have to truncate it somewhat to fit-- it's such a long story- since I also want to tell the story of the birth of Aphrodite and the Judgement of Paris in the same book. Alas, my Aphrodite is a brunette (unlike Mr. Fraser's) as a nod to both her eastern origins and Mr. Botticelli.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You could always take out the first three labours (leaving the one of the beauty-jar) and the explanation of how Eros fell in love with Psykhe.
    P.S. Which book do you think Aphrodite will be?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not a bad idea, I may steal it :). Aphrodite is currently slated as book 5, but there has been some concern that the lineup so far has been very female heavy, so she might have to wait for book 6.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wouldnt the whole male-female thing be pretty balanced? I mean, the first four books are half male half female. I dunno. I like comics and I like drawing them but I dont exactly have publishers and editors breathing down my neck telling me what they think.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ha! The worry might stem from the fear that too many goddess books up front will frighten away little boys because, as you know, girls have cooties. I should add that no one has said anything specific about Aphrodite's book being moved, it's my own supposition due to there being some concern about the Athena/ Hera one-two combo.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah. BTW can't wait for Athena to come out. Seriously. I'm thinking about hiding behind my local BORDERS and robbing the first Athena truckload that arrives. I might leave a ten dollar bill or something. Who knows. I'm crazy.

    ReplyDelete
  11. B.T.W. Just got Athena. Personally, I love Triton from mythology. So I'm a little sad you didn't actually show his face.

    P.S. If you don't upload more character sketches, I may have to hang myself like Arakhne. Do you want me to end up a spider?

    ReplyDelete