Saturday, September 10, 2016

Ceres



New art of Ceres, the Roman Goddess of grain; this was done as the monthly Goddess by Request for August over on my Patreon (hey, for $3 a month you can tell me what to draw!) This one is in colored pencil, in a bit of a different technique than my usual heavy thick blended layers. I was trying to keep it sort of ethereal, like indirect and reflected lighting on marble; I got it pretty close to what I wanted. I went with a sort of northern Italian look for Her because She is often described as a blonde to go with the golden wheat that is Hers. She is wearing the corona spicea or wheat crown, though only the outside layer of grain ears are wheat: the droopy light brown ones are spelt, and the inner pale ones barley. The crown also has dried poppy pods and ripe rapeseed, from which canola oil is made (mentioned by an ancient author as a crop to be blessed by Ceres).

It's always fun to compose for a tondo (the circular composition that was quite popular in the Renaissance); I shall definitely have to do more of them. The original is about eight and a half inches in diameter, in Prismacolor colored pencils on bristol board. And again, I've put this one up as a print over on my deviantArt page, in case anyone's interested.

2 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Your recent work is as gorgeous as always! My prints of Mokosh have come safe and sound and I'm very pleased!

Julia Ergane said...

Even though you have identified Her as Ceres, I can see Demeter in Her as well. I am a hard polytheist in that I do not believe Ceres and Demeter are the same Goddess, either.