Troubleshooting Norse gods

Pin It Now! Today I'm posting one that I was doing some fixing up on over the weekend. This is Skadi (pronounced SKA-thee). She is actually a jötunn which is like a Norse giantess, but there's a lot of overlap with the attributes and powers of the regular Norse gods. Anyway, she is basically a goddess associated with skiing, bowhunting, winter, and mountains.

I posted the drawing of just her figure some time ago, but here's the complete drawing, as well as a snippet of the completed painting.

It's harder to tell with the cropped figure, but I was having some size issues with the original drawing because the proportions looked a little off. In Photoshop I reduced the size of the head somewhat (after I had already painted it), and lowered the right arm a little. Something I had to do a lot of little picking at to make everything go well together after changing those size areas a little. Anyway, I feel like it looks more proper now.

I've also been completing Nott, goddess that brings the night to the sky, so I'll probably post something from that next Monday.

:)

another drawing & exhibit date announcement

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So here's another one in the works. I've been looking over my stuff and trying to post things that I haven't really shown yet. I actually tweeted this one out a while ago, but I so rarely tweet (not really my thing) that I'm assuming very few saw it.

I'll start painting this one pretty soon, but I'm finishing up Nott and Skadi at the moment.

This nefarious looking character is my depiction of Loki. Here he's working on one of his more dastardly deeds, when he caused the MOST BELOVEDEST god, Baldr, to be killed.

Loki, what a jerk.

He found out that mistletoe, of all things, was the only thing in heaven & earth that no one had remembered to get to swear not to harm the beloved Baldr. Sooo, he got some mistletoe and handed it to this nice blind god, Hodr, and helped him to throw it at Baldr. Baldr was playing a fun game where everybody threw things at him which couldn't harm him because "everything" had sworn not to hurt him. Whoops. Yeah, that went bad.

In other news, here's my save-the-date for the exhibit for this Norse series:

I posted this the other day on Facebook, but just in case someone didn't see it there... Be there if you can!
:D

More work, and Exhibit Announcement

Pin It Now! This lil' art blog has been shockingly silent, but I'm making a commitment to get some regular Monday posts going, so here we go!

First, I now have show dates for the exhibit of my Norse mythology series -- Woo Hoo! It'll be in December and I'll post a Save-the-Date very soon.

Second, I do have several pieces of new work so I'm posting two of those pieces today.  They've been done for a little while, but I was glancing through my Facebook posts, etc. and I don't think I've posted these yet.

They are Fenrir, the monstrous wolf child of Loki, and Hrímnir, a legendary frost giant. I like showing the progression from first thumbnail image idea to completed work, so I'm including those thumbnails here for you to see:

I'm very excited about this work and definitely excited about having the exhibit for it.

Later!

Sleipnir again.

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Here's the latest.  Had fun working on this one over my Thanksgiving break.  Here is Sleipnir, Odin's 8-legged horse.  I posted a different take on painting this one some months ago, but I'm much happier with this version.

I was able to enjoy gorgeous surroundings as inspiration while I worked, as I spent Thanksgiving week up in King's Canyon National Park next to Sequoia trees.  I felt like I was in Lothlorien :)

Next up, I'm back to painting on my Frost Giant drawing, previously shown.  Also never quite finished Freyja, so need to complete her painting.

I'm very much looking forward to some extended (and much needed) art work time when teaching lets up for Christmas break!

Odin and Frigg

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Finished (I think) Frigg today.  Here she is putting clouds in the sky using her magical distaff.  See previous post of the unfinished version.  Same with Odin -- here's the completed version.

I think I'll be working on one of the creatures next.  I need to go back and re-work Sleipnir, since I hadn't quite settled on my style for this series back when I first painted that one.  Though I also haven't finished Freyja so that one is also on the back burner.

Anyway, I'm very happy with how these are coming out.  I feel like I'm getting better with my painting and just hope to get a-goin' on having more of them done.

:D

In the news...

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Hey, so that newspaper article for the Signal Tribune with me as the artist spotlight was put out today :D

I'm trying not to let it go to my head, but...

An unfortunate event, getting some press & Odin-in-progress

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Well, hello again!  As a teacher, the new school year getting rolling has REALLY kept me busy.  I also had quite an unfortunate event kick things off -- my MacBook got stolen while I was at school on the first day of conservatory teaching :(  I did have anti-theft software installed, but I haven't been able to track it.  More importantly, I did have cloud back-up of my hard drive data through Backblaze -- yay!  So glad I had my computer files backed up.  That includes these Norse digital paintings!  I was able to set myself up again on my partner's 2011 MacBook that wasn't really getting used that much.  Phew.  A crummy thing to happen, but it could have been an even bigger disaster.

Anyway, that whole experience put a crimp in my workflow for a bit... but I feel like I'm getting back on track.  Been working on the Odin painting, as you can see above.

I also was able to get recommended through my mentor, Dorte Christjansen, for an artist profile for The Signal Tribune, a local paper!  The Signal Tribune serves the city of Signal Hill, which is very unique as it is completely contained by the larger city of Long Beach, where I reside.  The interview, including images of my work, is scheduled for the Oct. 3 edition.  Yay!

Okee doke, back to work.
:)