The weekly challenge word over at Monday Artday is “warrior“.
Here’s how I arrived at this:
I searched warrior at wikipedia, and I came up with a general description of war and battles and the people who love them. Then I came to a section about women warriors, specifically a character named Vishpala.
Vishpala was a woman in the Rigveda, a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to Rigvedic deities. It is counted among the four Hindu sacred texts known as the Vedas.
Vishpala is helped in battle by the Ashvins (the doctors of gods). She lost her leg in Khela’s battle and they gave her a “leg of iron” so that she could keep fighting. Cool!
This immediately brought to mind Rose McGowan’s character in the “Planet Terror” segment of “Grindhouse“.
Many, many years ago, when I was in art school, I was taught to always look for reference material (or ‘scrap’) before doing an illustration. I searched Yahoo and Google for Female Warriors. This resulted in page after page of predominantly two things: scantily-clad Frazetta amazons wielding giant broadswords and pictures of Xena. I thought, “If these women are headed for battle, wouldn’t they be covered in armor?”
So, no femme fatale military bimbos for me. My Vishpala is using her new, god-given iron leg to kick some enemy ass!
Let me know what you think.
Very nice!
I have asked a mess of artists to do a respectable Vishpala for my website’s logo and I just want to pull my hair out. They just don’t get it. Thanks so much for this awesome illustration of the “Warrior Queen” headed back out to battle again. Please let me know what I need to do to get permission to user her on my site.
Lovely!,
Chris Steel
I hope those math problems never get much harder! LOL A challenge to this aging brain.
What a great compliment from Chris. I love your work and this little warrior is just terrific. Your backgrounds are always interesting–I think they are in some ways the best part because they are subtle and you have to look closely to see what they depict. Nice stuff!
I think she is terrific and I love that you didn’t turn her into a glorified sexed up version of a warrior and gave her the tools to do what she needs to do. Awesome!