Back to Egypt

The focus returns to Egypt for my next piece, following the one I did last October on Anubis, also from my Kerby Rosanes' Mythomorphia book.

One can't get more Egyptian than the Sphinx, the mythological creature often depicted as guarding pyramids and pharaohs' tombs. This animal has variously been depicted as male or female, but often with the body of a lion, a human head and the wings of a bird.

With this drawing, I worked on her headgear, arm band and cuff first, using bronze, pale yellow and a deep brown to give a bronze/copper finish. It was another exercise in rendering the high-contrast finish typical of metal. I find myself getting more confident with this, having done gold and silver in previous works.

I knew early on that tawny browns would dominate this picture, given that it would be a lion's body,  and it being a desert setting and all. I was therefore not too sure about making the blanket on her body brown as well; to take the monotone out of this, I gave the hem a pop of color with one of my favorite jewel-color combos - scarlet, bright blue and teal, and picked up this trio of colors also for the tassels. I was fairly pleased with it when done.

With no strong push one way or other on the color of the wings, I picked a stronger brown. It was only after the wings were done that I felt that this whole thing was becoming too brown - which is far from one of my favorite colors.

Then again, maybe it isn't "too brown". I'd rather a picture be monotone than one with colors that sock you between the eye. I see some online coloring works that are totally raw in color. In my Sec 4 art teacher's view, that's anathema. No color in nature is like that - straight from your tube of paint, she would say. (RIP, Mrs Woon.)

The Sphinx done, I took the chance to play around with color in the other objects in the background. I went with warm grey (70%) for the columns, grading it to violet for the parts facing the sun. The pyramids were in cool grey (50%) and deco peach. I was aiming for the colors one might "see" in the golden hour of day, amid the brown-ness.

Out of playfulness, I made the cat blue and the two birds a combo of rust red and pink. With all the browns in play, there was some sort of palette there, I guess!

The sun to the far right presented a chance to lay down rich layers of vermillion, Spanish orange and pale yellow. Carmine red was added to the rim for depth.

The sky: The parts nearest the sun were a lavender, graduating to a lilac, then light cerulean and then cerulean furthest from the sun. I used a tissue paper to smooth out the gradations and obscure the pencil lines.

Right half of the picture

The left half, close-up.