Medusa

I finally managed to get Medusa done.

The story of Medusa is really sad. One of the main stories with her was that Medusa use to be a beautiful priestess for the Temple of Athena. Many men sought after her, but she choose to serve Athena. The god Poseidon found her beautiful as well, and one day entered the temple and raped Medusa. Instead of being angry with Poseidon, Athena set her fury on Medusa for disgracing her temple (it was expected of Poseidon to go after females, so that was why he was excused). In anger, Athena turned Medusa in the hideous monster that she is now. Since then, Medusa lived a solitary life away from people, because gazing upon her turns them into stone.

I did some research to find out what venomous snakes were native to the Greece area, and found about the Vipera Ammodytes (Horned Viper). I decided to reference them for Medusa's "hair".

Paper: Strathmore Toned Gray (9x12)

Medium: Colored Pencils (Faber Castell Polychromos)

  

More Progress on Medusa

 The body of the snakes are mostly finished, so I started working on the skin. My goal is to give the skin a rough look. I plan on having this finished before November ends.

Snakes for Hair

I've started on the snakes. So far it's not as bad as I thought it would be, working on them. Right now, I'm just getting the basic color scheme in before I refine the details more.

Faber-Castell Polychromos are now being use.

Medusa: A Work in Progress

Recently, I got the inspiration to create a Medusa portrait. I've had a book of Strathmore Tone Gray paper, and I believe Medusa will work very nicely with it. This is just the line art for a start. I have a separate sketch book that I used mostly for line art and I then transfer the art on nicer paper. I thought that the gray paper was light enough for the original line art to show through via the lightbox, but that wasn't the case. So I had to transfer it the old fashion way, which is rubbing graphite on tracing paper and then drawing over the lines with enough pressure in order for it to show on the gray paper. Well, now I know.

I think I have my work cut out for me on this one especially with the snakes. It'll be a good challenge. :)

I'll be posting some more process shots along the way with this one.

Olive green Prismacolor Verithin pencil used for the line art.