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.

Octopus in metallic pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is ocean, and that was just the excuse I needed (not like I needed an excuse anyway, but work with me here) to play a bit with the Derwent metallic water-soluble pencils I got for Christmas.

I'm pretty impressed that they scan so well, especially with my fussy scanner. I'll have to get myself some heavier black paper now so that I can play with washes. The paper you see here is only 60 lb and far too absorbent, so my first attempt at using these with a brush was... well, kind of pointless. I'll let you know what happens with more appropriate paper.

Incidentally, Wheat (my office mate. Long story on the internet nickname) and I are of the opinion -- very honest opinion -- that it's a darned good thing for the human race that octopods don't have very long lives. They're extremely intellegent, they're able to manipulate things, they can walk on land (don't believe me? Search for it. There are more than a few videos that prove it)... I'm not kidding when I say that if they lived longer we'd all have octopus overlords.

A good thing, or a bad thing? I haven't quite decided that part yet.