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– Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

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Finally got around to finishing a proper portrait of my most recent character Thalia! I’d like to do one for my other characters since it’s a new year & they are all in desperate need of a proper portrait 😅

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-Medusa-

I've had this sitting around as a sketch for awhile, finally had time to finish it! Hoping to do more mythology illustration this year.

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I had come to the house, in a cave of trees, Facing a sheer sky. Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike, Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me And the hissing hair, Held up at a window, seen through a door. The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now. Nothing will ever stir. The end will never brighten it more than this, Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall, And the tipped bell make no sound. The grass will always be growing for hay Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow Under the great balanced day, My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind, And does not drift away.

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Medusa

Louise Bogan 1897–1970

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Graphic - Tehani Farr (B.1998)

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Van Arno   Medusa infested

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A continuation of my Medusa post here.

Since people have been asking for links and sources about Medusa, I'll provide a little bibliography of various sources you can compare and debate about. Note that the bibliography about Medusa is even wider and bigger than the little samples I provide below, but I think they form a good "basic set" or "starting kit". (And I might have forgotten things, since I originally wrote my post unplanned and wasn't ready for it to blow up so much. I am just a tiny little blog that didn't get as much as seven likes on my biggest things you know Xp)

First of all, a resource that is fully available for free on Google Books: here, or here. It is called "Dangerous Beauties: Medusa in Classical Art", a Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, published in the winter of 2017. Very beautiful and informative with lot of nice art. There's also more about the exposition tied to this publication here. There was another publication by the Metropolitan Museum that can be of some interest, Majorie Milne's "Perseus and Medusa on an Attic Vase".

When it comes to English-speaking books analysing and dissecting the Medusa myth, two works keep popping up everywhere. 2003's "The Medusa Reader", and Stephen Wilk's "Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon". They do form references when it comes to the overview, analysis and evolution of the Gorgon figure. Other works of note include David Leeming's "Medusa in the Mirror of Time", and Thalia Feldman's "Gorgo and the Origins of Fear" (published within "Arion", I don't know if it had been published elsewhere). The Internet Archive has a free copy, right here, of Frederick Thomas Elworthy's "The Evil Eye: The Classical Account of an Ancient Superstition".

If you can read French, go read Jean-Pierre Vernant's works that tackled the Gorgon: "La mort dans les yeux: Figures de l'Autre en Grèce Ancienne", (Death in the eyes: Figures of the Other in Ancient Greece - explores the legends of the Gorgon and of Artemis) ; and his co-work with Pierre-Vidal Naquet "Mythe et tragédie en Grèce Ancienne" (Vernant did wrote in English a part of The Medusa Reader, the article "In the mirror of Medusa"). Jean Clair also wrote an interesting document: "Méduse. Contribution à une anthropologie des arts du visuel."

And finally, the cherry at the top, the Internet Archive even has a copy of the scholia (well, one of them), in which the old Pherecyde tales are described - the ones that make proof the idea of Medusa having been turned into a monster by Athena due to a crime of vanity and boasting is as old as the 5th century BC. It is right here. If you like to read Latin, go have fun.

(Shoutout to the people who asked for links and sources - which is absolutely normal and indeed much needed in this time of widespread misinformation and websites that can literaly invent Greek goddesses of torture out of nowhere

@60sec400 @fishlord-main @nouzillard @bigsnorp @gendermeh and probably others I forgot about

EDIT: adding @tanoraqui and @beanshery to the list)

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Here's a cheerful Gorgon to ward evil from your dashboard!🧿👅< With my sincere apologies to the ancient Greek artist now often called the Berlin Painter.

(painting from a late Archaic Athenian vase depicting a Gorgon chasing Perseus. München, Staatliche Antikensammlungen.)

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Changeling kisses for good luck?

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Don’t look at those above your station 🐍🐍🐍

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Cyberpunk Medusa

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lemom 🍋

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I don't use glaze or nightshade, since I feel they both ruin pictures and probably won't have that much of an effect in the end (I believe in regulations more). That said, I still try the programs out sometimes and liked this picture more with the glaze effect. Win-win.

Sisters Elysia (pink, belongs to @leapofdoomocs) and Echo (white, mine) about to discuss Echo's new bush viper boyfriend. I thought it would be a funny gorgon thing to talk about their different snake species and specifics.

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Archaic Medusa

Got tired of seeing Medusa designed as a generic pretty woman but with snake hair. Also made a little height chart.

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“this last was made to show a blank-eyed Gorgon’s head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side.” -Iliad, book 11

Medusa; as depicted and described by the archaic and ancient Greeks; hideous, with the tusks of a boar, bulging eyes, wings, and talons; similar to other fierce beings from India to New Zealand  who grimace, glare, protrude their tungs and fangs to ward off evil and terrify foes.

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A many faced Gorgon OC for commission🐍

I liked doing all the little snake faces with different personalities

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been drawing too many old men recently, hi, im a lesbian, cute Gorgon girls be upon Ye