Saturday, September 12, 2009

Brahma on Holiday


A long time ago I was planning to do a series of illos on gods of various pantheons. Not for any other reason than I find the subject matter very interesting and visually appealing. I did one of Quetzacoatl and of Tlaloc (Aztec rain god). For some reason or another I didn't complete any others. I did however do some pretty complete sketches of Ganesh, Devi and Brahma. They stayed in a large sketch book with a plan to someday do something with them. About a year ago the area I live in was hit with a flood. At the time I wasn't drawing at all and had lots of soakable and easily destroyable art things poorly stored in cardboard boxes. It pains me to say I lost quite a bit of old sketches and art; I'm talking at least 8-10 years worth. It pains me even more the rest of "the gods" sketches were included in the loss. That coupled with finding these tee sites really got me motivated to draw and create stuff again. More than anything though, the loss made me realize how much I missed drawing. I was seriously down for a few months after that.

This started out with me trying to recreate the Brahma sketch. I remembered it being a more traditional representation with the faces being made of stone (like an old statue). I had the stone cracking in sections and pieces were missing. The heads were floating in space. His hands were also floating around the head making various hand gestures (peace, thumbs up, etc). I did the line drawing of the faces and it was OK, but I felt it needed more edge. One of my favorite clay craft pieces from Mexico is an Aztec/Mayan relief sculpture depicting birth, life and death; one face opens up to another, which opens up to another. Since I had the three heads there I thought I would mix it up a little and depict Brahma with those features. It's not meant to be anything other than hopefully an interesting visual. I certainly don't mean any disrespect to Hinduism so hopefully it is not taken that way.
On a positive note! It has been approved and is ready for voting at DBH! VOTE HERE!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Marauder


The skull originally was a pencil sketch I scanned and redrew in PS. Everything around the skull (helmet, daggers) was also drawn in PS. Splatters used in face and helmet are from a free brush set by Dead Hope. Splatters in the background were homemade using photos taken of a table top used for applying emulsion to screens.
Submitted, approved and up for voting at Metal Ink. Vote Here!