Embla on the First Day

Behold, my latest masterpiece.

I took the torso (shoulder blades to ankles) from a sketch I did in figure drawing.  (Need to go back there, haven't been since before Turkey day).  And I've had this picture for years, of an old drawing or print of branches, that I've been wanting to use.  And they somehow just fit together.  I had to make a lot of it up, good reference pics are hard to find, especialy when you're looking for something specific, not just topic but style as well.

"In Norse Mythology, Ask and Embla were the first two humans created by the gods. Odin and his brothers, Ve and Vili, took two pieces of driftwood from a beach and gave them human shapes. Odin then gave them the breath of life, Vili gave them wit and emotions, and Ve gave them senses and speech. These two people, Ask ("ash"), the male, and Embla ("elm"), became the progenitors of all humanity."

So basically, the Norse equivalent of Eve... With a bit of Daphne (sculpture by Bernini) and Pygmalion's statue thrown in...

It took several weeks to finish, the longest my attention span has lasted so far. I tend to prefer 12 hour marathon sessions, where I stay up all night hopped up on caffiend and good tunes and throw off my entire schedule for weeks afterwards. This time I tried something different, working on it for a few hours after work, all day on weekends, and actually encouraging a symbiotic relationship between my art life and my work life. Whoda thunk it? It actually works!

I took a picture of it half way through, when I had just the outlines done. That was the easy part. It just flowed, each part fitting perfectly with the next...  She just wanted to be :)



Then I added colour.


Eeesh!!  You'd think I'd have learned by now not to torture myself with such large pieces.  Painting big is one thing, coloured pencil is horrendous.  Just to get the richness and saturation I want I have to press so hard my hands ache for days afterwards, and my knuckles swell up and my thumb and two fingers go numb every time.  
 
But I think it was worth it this time.  I could have done it better, but at least it doesn't suck.