Work in progress - God of Birds

I seem to have been dabbling heavily in mythological/god-like figures lately. It's mainly because I enjoy the allegorical quality of such characters: It's like putting a human face on wonders of nature and life.

With that in mind, I was pondering one night on the fact that, aside from some animist societies, we represent deities, nature spirits and allegorical figures as humans or, at least, partly human. Even Death, despite being universal and a reality for all creatures, is traditionally portrayed as a human skeletal figure (my own piece featuring Death coming soon ;) ).

Therefore, I was wondering whether our fellow animals would personify objects of worship as their own species, if they were so inclined.

To explore that concept, I began with the God of Birds. I figured that birds would probably come up with a sun-deity. Since birds tend to begin singing at dawn, many birds who flock do an impressive 'dance' at sundown and migratory birds rely heavily on celestial bodies to navigate (the sun being the brightest), I pictured birds celebrating a surreal, vaguely bird-like god in the shining orb.

This is a first sketch, entirely digital (as opposed to a pencil/ink drawing) and the style turned out quite different compared to my usual stuff: The God of Birds-

New piece - Sky Maidens

Another piece with mythological undertones. Since I've recently explored more Asian and Indian styles, I went with a Greek or Roman feel. At first, I had the goddess Selene in mind, but it turned into more generic allegories of the Moon and stars.



I guess I could post more images of the work progress. It looks nice and spiffy on a blog... But as I previously mentioned, I'm a bit lazy about it. It's good enough that I draw, no?? ;)

New piece - Mehndi

A new piece I did, inspired not by a specific goddess but by the art of mehndi or henna designs.



The figure is based on old, voluptuous Indian sculptures and I hope I successfully captured the 'rasa' as Vilayanur Ramachandran might say ;)

Penelope!!

It's been a while since I've updated the good ol' blog, but I like to think that introducing little Penelope to this crazy world is a good enough excuse...



Born on July 21 (right on the due date), she's been every bit as wonderful as one could expect. Every cliché about parental love and how one 'falls in love the minute one sees their little face' is true. In spite of the 14 hours-long labour, the home birth abruptly ending in the hospital- not to mention a very freaked-out taxi driver- and no sleep, I was mind-boggled by how happy I felt (Jacob sharing every bit of the intense emotions) and how intensly I loved the little sweetie dozing off on my chest. She had just popped out, but she certainly felt like no stranger. It was little Penelope, alright.

So fast-forwarding 6 weeks, our little 6 pounds bundle is closer to 10 and showing off her first coos and laughter and making her parents topple over with glee. I don't know where all those weird studies about parents being unhappy come from :P

I'm looking forward to every step of the way with her by our side.



All that said, since this is in theory an art blog, Penelope has been letting me draw. I've just been lazy with the scanning and posting... ;)