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CHOW #182 rough and Hand Studies

Posting a sketch for CHOW #182- The Morrigan

Description:

The Morrigan is ‘The Phantom Queen’ of Irish Celtic legend. Associated with death, prophecy, sovereignty she would appear to heroes when their life was in mortal danger. She appeared to Cú Chulainn ( from last week’s CHOW ) as an apparition of three crones, and her symbol, a black crow or raven appeared at his death. But she is more commonly seen as a beautiful and terrible woman with long wild hair. As a shape shifter she could also take on other animal forms. In mythology she is often seen as what is known as a ‘triple goddess’, incorporating ‘the crone, the mother and the maiden’, common across many cultures.

The Morrigan was once mistaken to be a banshee, the female spirit of ill omen and death, but she is more complicated than that. She is not a spirit but a goddess. Your task is to provide your personal interpretation of The Morrigan. Keep her in the mythical past, so no updating, but feel free to portray her as either terrible goddess, crone, mother or maiden. However, because of her associations with ‘battle and death’, you might do well to keep these aspects in mind when designing her.

I was going to have her washing Cu Chulainn's broken and bloodied armor in a stream but this sketch didn't go anywhere at all. She was going to be young and beautiful but haggard and dirty, since she was both desirable to men but often appeared to people as an old crone. Anyway I won't go into much depth since the sketch isn't really worthy of any lengthy description.

The other sketch is just some hand studies.

Anatomy sketches 02

I did some more anatomy studies and a bit of a focus on hands. I find myself sometimes looking for 2D shapes and negative space when sketching these, when really I should be focusing on the 3D form of the underlying bones and muscles. I've got to try and shake that habit and concentrate.

Argh, sometimes I also feel as though my art has gone backwards! Some older drawings will have a really well drawn hand or face and I wonder if I just fluked it or if I had a better understanding of anatomy back then that I have since forgotten from a lack of practice?