OLYMPIANS POSTER! A complete walkthrough

The upcoming Olympians poster is as finished as it's gonna get. I thought you might like to see this step-by-step process of how it was made, from the finish all the way back to the sketch.

finished color

finished inks

pencils

sketch

As promised, more lil Olympians

Dug up some sketches to share...

Aphrodite warm up

So I'm at about the halfway point with the artwork on Aphrodite, and, I'm not sure if I got some bad nibs, or the quality of the paper I use changed or what,  but all of a sudden the last few days my pens have become gloppy and my pages keep getting torn up (you can see a great big glop from one of those nibs on my warm up drawing today). I changed out all my nibs this morning after that glop, and did some doodling to break them in a bit. Here's what I drew, an Ares, a Hephaistos, and a couple of Aphrodites.

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #30

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.

30 days in a row! If this were September, April, June or November, we'd have a full month of Olympiansy sketchy goodness! But, alas, it's May...

Anyhoo, today's sketch is a smokin' hot Hephaistos, wearing some rather fetching clogs. I wonder if Aphrodite picked them out for him?

A-Sketch-a-Day-Until-Hera #25

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 near-complete assemblage of the gods. Unfortunately, as you can tell, I drew this across the spread of my sketchbook, so we have a big ol' crease running down the middle. From left to right we have Poseidon, Dionysos, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaistos, Hera, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and Athena. At this point in time I was toying with the idea of Hestia not having a human form at all, but just being personified by a hearth (that's her in the middle). Eventually, I compromised and made her a humanoid figure composed of flame. Conspicuously absent is Big Daddy Zeus himself-- that's because this drawing is done from a Zeus eye view. We're viewing this family get-together from his seat at the table.

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.

Antique of the Week: The Hephaisteion in Athens

This week's installment of Antique of the Week is the Hephaisteion, or Temple of Hephaistos, that has stood overlooking the Athenian Agora (literally, "open space", the Greek equivalent to a Roman forum) since the 5th Century BCE. It is often cited as one of, if not the, best preserved ancient Greek temple.



The Hephaisteion has also been known as the Theseion due to the belief that it housed the mortal remains of the famous Athenian hero Theseus, best known as the slayer of the minotaur. This was probably due to the fact that the temple formerly was decorated with sculptural representations of Theseus and his adventures, amongst others. A few pieces remain on site,as can be glimpsed in the photo below



In the time when this structure was still used as an actual temple, it held bronze statues of Hephaistos himself, as well as another statue of Athena, in her aspect as the goddess of crafts (both statues are now lost, unfortunately). Appropriately, the Temple was formerly surrounded by many workshops, clayworkers and forges.



On the day we visited, amongst the other pilgrims was this tortoise, which seems to me to be a particularly Hephaisteion type of animal.

Sketchbook Sneak Peek: Hephaistos

For today, a nice, energetic sketch of Hephaistos, Blacksmith of the Gods, hammering away on some marvelous treasure at his forge. It's surprisingly refreshing to draw the misshapen and hulking Hephaistos after drawing nothing but perfect gods and goddesses all day.