Building Ancient Gods
⊛ The Apple of Idun
⊛ cut paper / illustration board
For a farm boy, I spent an inordinate amount of time inside reading. The first real (non-picture) book I can remember devouring was a beautifully illustrated, highly-edited collection of Greek mythology. Over the years, my appetite for myth and fables has grown with me. I'm always looking for the tales of ancient cultures and new twists on old stories. August graced me with not one, but two different projects built on mythology. "Loki and the Apples of the Gods" a Norse tale as retold by Christy Lenzi for CRICKET magazine is the first of those. It will be appearing in the November 2006 issue, which, I believe, is to be spider-centric.
This piece is the first of four illustrations for the story, which I'm told incorporates a few interesting ideas associating Loki with the spider. For me that meant the chance to work spider imagery into the characters and Norse designs. I managed to resist having Loki do Spiderman's webslinging hand guesture. It was hard.
It's a great read and well worth checking out. Working with the Norse knots and tracery (of which not nearly enough remain) was unbelievably cool too.