Tuesday 22 January 2013

Daphne in various watercolour pencils

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is myth. Kind of my thing, what with the Classics courses in university and all of the sky mythology I do at work.

The scanner kind of killed this one, by the way, but I was expecting it to considering the medium. Or, I guess, media, since Inktense is technically ink and everything else was more standard watercolour. Anyway, I just decided to roll with it today. You can use your imagination if you'd like to guess at what the original really looks like.

The story of Daphne is easily findable on the internet, but the brief version is that Eros (Cupid) was annoyed with Apollo for saying that his arrows couldn't affect anything, so he shot Apollo with a gold-tipped arrow (leading to amorousness) and the naiad Daphne with a lead-tipped arrow (leading to abhorrence of love). Apollo chased, Daphne fled, and when it became obvious that she couldn't outrun the god she begged her father, the river god Peneus, to help her. He changed her into a laurel tree, and Apollo, still being in love, made the laurel his sacred symbol.

My Daphne looks nothing like a laurel, of course. Ah well. Artistic licence.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great myth to portray for this week's topic. I have always liked the story and fondly recall seeing Bernini's marble sculpture of Daphne's transformation during a visit to Rome several years ago.

Related Posts with Thumbnails