A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #5

Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory is finally coming out July 19th. To commemorate this momentous occasion I will be posting a drawing from my enormous cache of sketchbooks each weekday until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, and today's piece is from 2006.

 As you can see, today's drawing is a very early version of Persephone. If you've been following this blog at all, you're well aware how very, very different this design is from the Persephone that will eventually make her appearance in Olympians Book 4, Hades: Lord of the Dead. I would have to say of all the principle characters in Olympians that Persephone was the last one for me to get a handle on, and obviously at this stage of the game I had not gotten that handle yet. At this stage, she's all Dread Queen, no Young Maiden.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #4

Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory is finally coming out July 19th. To commemorate this momentous occasion I will be posting a drawing from my enormous cache of sketchbooks each weekday until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, and today's piece is from a sketchbook dated August 2006.

Today's piece is of the Divine Twins, Artemis and Apollo. Both of them are looking quite similar to their eventual appearances in the Olympians books, but it seems that since I drew this they've both visited the hairdresser. Artemis has two, count 'em, two moon pieces going on in her hair (the published version retains only the one in the back) whereas Apollo looks as if he actually lit his hair on fire. In keeping with the ancient Greeks' view of Apollo mainly as the god of the arts and a protector of young men, and not as the embodiment of the sun (a view that comes much later in antiquity) I've shifted that flaming 'do to Helios, the Titan who quite literally is the sun. I also dig the little bow on the front of Artemis's dress. What was I thinking with that?

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #3

Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory is finally coming out July 19th. To commemorate this momentous occasion I will be posting a drawing from my enormous cache of sketchbooks each weekday until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, and today's piece is from a sketchbook dated August 2006.

Today's piece is of Hephaistos, the blacksmith god of fire. Credited as he is with creating many beautiful and wondrous objects with unearthly technological skill (like robots! The ancient Greeks wrote about him creating robots! How cool is that?) I toyed with the idea of giving him a slightly anachronistic appearance, looking more steampunk than ancient Greekish. I also eventually dropped  his leg braces (I tend to just draw him stooped or sitting) and his body hair.

Fun fact-- I don't draw any of the gods in Olympians with body hair because, unlike us, I figure they didn't evolve from apes but rather take their human forms in imitation of us, and as such, they wouldn't have the traces of fur that we humans do. The one exception to this is Dionysos, the god of wine, who is the only Olympian to have a mortal parent.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #2

Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory is finally coming out July 19th. To commemorate this momentous occasion I will be posting a drawing from my enormous cache of sketchbooks each weekday until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, and today's piece is from a sketchbook dated August 2006.

Today's drawing is an early sketch of Hera herself, as well as her sister Demeter, goddess of the harvest (one of the stars of Hades: Lord of the Dead, coming in January!). As I've mentioned before, at this stage of the project I still hadn't even decided on the style I would be drawing Olympians in. These two are a bit more elongated and cartoony than the way they would eventually appear in print, but otherwise they're both pretty recognizable. One difference is Hera's peacock themed collar, which would have been rendered in color only, with no black lines. Ultimately, it looked too confusing as to what it was, exactly, so I dropped it. Also, that would have been a nightmare to color throughout a whole book, let alone a series.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #1

So Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory is finally coming out July 19th. To commemorate this momentous occasion I will be posting a drawing from my enormous cache of sketchbooks each weekday until Hera hits the shelves.

I decided it would be cool to go through these sketches chronologically, to trace the development of what would eventually become Olympians. The first sketchbook I'll be delving into is from way back in August of 2006-- I had just come back to Brooklyn after 8 months in Europe, traveling around visiting various sites of mythological interest. I'm starting here, instead of my European sketchbooks, because this is when I first started to really "get" what Olympians was going to be all about.

Starting off with a drawing of the king of the gods himself, Zeus. As is common in the early days of any of my projects, I'm still not even sure what style I'll be drawing it in. Facially, my Zeus is a bit more cartoony than what I ended up going with, but he's already the young buck  I portray him as instead of the old graybeard he's depicted as in so many other stories. I'm not sure what's going with his sash there, but  I do kind of like the lightning from his fingertips, and I may have to bring that effect into some future volumes of Olympians.