Monday, February 8, 2010

The Morrigan WIP

I painted this in China for a Conceptart.org Character of the Week (CHOW). The theme: The Morrigan. From wiki: The Morrigan "is a figure from Irish mythology who appears to have once been a goddess, although she is not explicitly referred to as such in the texts. She is associated with sovereignty, prophecy, war, and death on the battlefield."

I worked on it a bit further, I think I will add a simple border.

Any suggestions?


4 comments:

  1. Wow, I can't believe nobody's responded to this fantastic work! That's one thing I hate about blogs; everybody's looking but nobody says much! I'll try to give you some suggestions, but I'm a little uninterested with what most people think is sweet in illustration right now. Take it with a grain of salt, I suppose!

    I think the rendering on the goddess is awesome. I'd maybe soften up the structure of the man so he appears stylistically closer to the goddess. I'm not big on the abstract Andrew Jones-like elements but that's a personal preference. The biggest reason though is that the figures look more like a classic, renaissance painting and it's a ridged transition. However, if you add a boarder it may make that work.

    If you had the time this painting would be really dynamic with some more characters below. It reminds me of a lot of biblical renaissance work with an angle looming above a bunch of writhing figures below. If you pulled the camera back a bit and had more people responding to the goddess (especially facing different directions) I think it would add a lot to an already awesome piece of art.

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  2. thank you, yeah, I knew the figures were a bit different stylistically, but I wasn't sure of how to reconcile that. I love the idea of adding more figures to the bottom and elongating the painting, I guess it depends on how ambitious I'm feeling when I work on it next! haha

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  3. Hey Margaret,how was China?! lol
    I just found your blog like 5minutes ago so i figured I would go ahead and check Partisipate as josh has. I try to comment when i have time (or i'm prcrasinating) because i to get frustrated when people look but don't comment.

    My suggestions would be just a few things. I would love to see his head facing the woman. The idea of her depiction as an angelic being seems it would be much clearer if he was dying and looking up towards her. Another thing is that I feel like the feet and hands may be too large, the feet are the ones that stand out to me though. And I like the idea of a frame but I think just by adding something darker in that upper left hand corner I think it would really help you keep the eye locked into the composition. I feel drawn to that empty corner again and again. The details are really great though. Nice work, on this and on the work from China.

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  4. My hair is not too far from this... Pretty much what I look like in the morning. Hah.

    Excellent work. The flow is beautiful however I agree with Josh on the stylistic differences between the woman and the man. That's my only issue. Feels like two different paintings. Both Josh and Alex offered good changes :)

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