Sisters Of Danu

Story:
When the Tuatha Dé Danann went to the "Island of Destiny", six sisters went along with the other gods with three of them having one goal in mind, that being to have the new land named after them. Éiru ultimately won that. Over time her name was twisted in translation and changes to Éire, then to Ire. The land of Ire, or as it's known today; Ireland.

Idea:
The idea behind this was to mix Irish mythology with some archeology. Weapons and other offerings were gifted to water springs throughout the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Ironage on the isles which is probably why spirals were used as decorations for thousands of years using either blue woad or carvings. "Celts" were pretty prone to collecting heads too. The idea was that the three sisters are asking for the Danu to name the island after them. Take the myths with a grain of salt though, they're mostly written by Christain scholars. I had fun carving stuff out in this though and mixing in all the archeology stuff.

 The Morrígna sisters (crows)

The Border Guardian

The theme around the piece is very much based on the border between the land of the living and the land of the dead in British and Irish prehistorical landscapes. Places like stone henge are often dedicated to ancestors and have entire areas which were almost segregated as the land of the dead. Stone, in general, was associated with ancestry whereas wood was dedicated to life with a special relationship surrounding water in the centre of it all. If there ever was "border guardians" we may never know, but It was fun to think about as I worked through this piece.

The Queen of Io

Io is the closest moon of Jupiter, its almost the exact same size as our own moon but with the interesting effect of it being one of the most violent places in our solar system. Reason behind it is that because three of Jupiter's moons (including Io) line up periodically, with the moon being between both the two other moons and Jupiter its self, it quite literally distorts by about 100 meters; as a result the kinetic energy heats up the small moon to the point there is constant eruptions happening. It's one of the most fascinating places in our solar system.

This piece overall gave me hell. It was almost abandoned a couple of times but I've came to a result where I'm okay to let it go. All Photoshop over about 12 hours (way too long)

British Neolithic Monument - 3000BC

Been reading some history this week, thought Id have a go at illustrating a henge in situ. For the most part, Historians have no idea what the stone circles were actually for. They have various alignments to astrology and they have found burials in and around them, but they dont know if they were used strictly for the dead, worship to a higher power or if indeed they were just clocks for Neolithic people to use for their crops. I would like to think they were used for all of those things on some level and not just to make sacrifices to a god long-forgotten.