A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #75

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 every day until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from April of 2007.

Today's drawing is an early design of the invisibility-causing Wolfcap of Hades, as well as a shot of a Cyclops holding said helmet. The scene of Hades and Poseidon receiving their weapons from the Cyclopes had to be trimmed from Zeus: King of the Gods due to pacing; I had hoped to include that scene in the upcoming Poseidon: The Yet to be Subtitled but just had to trim it as well. This little sketch might end up being all you ever see of my version of these events.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #72

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 every day until Hera hits the shelves. I'll be going through them chronologically, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from April of 2007.

 

 

I really like this drawing of a Cyclops I came upon. He either looks like he keeps on truckin', or maybe that he's going to ease on down, ease on down the ro-oad.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #59

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, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from February of 2007.

Yet more sharpie sketches, this time of a Titan and a Cyclops. It makes sense, looking back, that I would do so many high contrast marker sketches of these characters who spent so much of Zeus: King of the Gods cloaked in shadow.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #57

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, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from February of 2007.

Back to pencils today. A couple of studies of a Cyclops, and a shot of Zeus to boot. I really dig the bottom Cyclops-- looks like he's going "whatchu looking at?"

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #47

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, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from January of 2007.

I've often told people that my design for the Cyclopes is one that exists since my childhood, and that is true, but that doesn't mean that I didn't tweak the form here and there along the way. Here is a rather hulking hunchbacked specimen of Cyclops I played with for awhile.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #31

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, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from sometime in latish 2006.

31 days in a row! No matter how you slice it, that's a full month's worth of Olympians sketches. Woot!

To celebrate, I found this goofy drawing of a Cyclops. It looks kind of like this guy from earlier in the month but, y'know, goofier.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #21

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, with today's piece coming from a sketchbook from sometime in latish 2006.

Today's sketch is a real oddity. It's a humongous Cyclops (just look at the trees sliding off his back) apparently waking up from some sort of subterranean slumber. What's weird is that I already had worked out the designs for Brontes, Steropes and Arges (the original 3 Cyclopes) by this time.  I'd also been working in a certain direction for the eventual appearance of Poseidon's son Polyphemos and it didn't look like this guy, though both designs do owe a lot to elephant skulls (scale-wise, this guy is just way too big for Ployphemos anyway). So who was I drawing then? I guess just a random cyclops (I love me them Cyclopes), but still, I thought it was pretty neat, so I'm sharing it with all of you.

Fan Art Forum! A Cyclopean Horde!

Recently I visited my good friends at PS 63 and the Neighborhood School in NYC. I shared some of my drawing secrets with the kids there and this is what they did:




Oh, gods! Run! It's a mob of Cyclopes! Electric Cyclopes, fanged Cyclopes, winged Cyclopes, horned Cyclopes, robo-Cyclopes, armored Cyclopes, Cyclopes with eye-beams, Cyclopes with hand grenades! RUN!



Oh, but wait! We have an army of Athenas to defend us! Sure, she's outnumbered, but she is a warrior goddess. I suppose we're in good hands. In fact, I feel pretty bad for that one lonely Cyclops sharing the page with all these Athenas. Good thing it has wings ;)


A special thanks to everyone at PS 63 and the Neighborhood School who drew a Cyclops or an Athena, and thanks for letting me post them up here. Special thanks to super-librarian Cheryl Wolf (and her assistants) for scanning these for me.

Fan Art Forum! Cyclops!

It's time for another installment of the Fan Art Forum! Got a drawing of your favorite mythological character? Want to see it posted online? Send me your drawing!



I recently did an appearance at the library at East Elmhurst in Queens where I showed the kids how to draw some of the characters in Zeus and Athena. This terrific drawing of a cyclops comes from Ovidio, who finished it up after I left and asked the librarian to send it to me. Great job, Ovidio! By the way, I don't know if Ovidio knows this, but he was made for mythology. He shares a name with Ovid, the famous Roman writer who gave us the Metamorphoses, one of the most famous ancient sources we have of Greek myths. A lot of what happens in my newest book, Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess, comes from sources provided by Ovid.

It looks like we have another famous Ovid(io) on our hands! If you'd like to see your own drawing here, please send me a scan of it (if you can) and a few words and we'll post it. I'd love to see your drawings!

Sketchbook Sneak Peek: Polyphemos

Here's something to give you an idea how far ahead I work on this series. Both this monster, Polyphemos the Cyclops, and the previously spotlighted Minotaur, are not due to make an appearance until Book 5 of Olympians, dealing with Poseidon. Right now, I'm hard at work on the finished art for Book #, The Glory of Hera, and so far, only book 1 Zeus: King of the Gods is available in stores. Still, these guys are appearing in my sketchbook now so that when it comes time to draw them down the line, I've worked out all the kinks of their design.

Myth records two very different interpretations of the Cyclopes. There's the Earth-born "uncles" to the Olympians, allies of the gods, whom we've met already in Zeus. Then there's the terrible cannibalistic brute Polyphemos as depicted in the Odyssey. I've opted to depict them as different species entirely, with no more in common than they both must have monocular vision. The head of Polyphemos here is based off an elephant's skull, as it has been often theorized in modern times that the Ancient Greeks would find the skulls of extinct pachyderms and mistake the trunk-hole for a giant eye cavity. I can definitely see that. Looking at the skull now, I wonder if I shouldn't give my Polyphemos some tusks?