Spring Visions in the Seasons of Sacrifice
It is sort of ironic that I’m working on Spring doodles in the midst of some of the coldest days we’ve had in Pennsylvania this year!
I am really disappointed that I can’t show you more progress on this project right now. Work and life have taken precedence over art (which is still just a hobby for me), but I have spent endless hours dreaming-of, thinking-about, and planning this collection of pieces. It’s difficult to translate inspiration into something tangible and meaningful for other people, but I’ll do my best to give a quick outline of my current overall vision for this project.
Seasons of Sacrifice is a story about a band of druids (and specifically one druid) that is presented through a collection of seasonal illustrations starting with Spring and ending with Winter. Druidic beliefs often combined storytelling and myth with reality, and in this way, I’m hoping to create a dark and magical tale that is told through visuals. I don’t know if the story will ever actually be ‘written down’, though there is the potential for that to happen in the future. For now, I’m more interested in taking steps in a new direction and working on a cohesive collection as well as experimenting with mediums and techniques in order to push my artistic abilities. So, in all actuality, Seasons of Sacrifice is a metaphor for letting go of old practices and embracing new ideas in order to improve, learn and grow.
This process is going to begin with planning, thinking, planning and re-thinking, and so, I’ve started with doodles and sketches. I’m hoping to ultimately have about 6 pieces per season (spring, summer, fall and winter), and maybe some supporting illustrations/studies. I am currently working on spring and I have the initial concepts for all six pieces prepared for this season (shown below).
My next step will be to take each one of these concepts and work on additional sketches to experiment with a variety of compositions. Finally, after selecting a composition for each of the 6 concepts, I plan on taking my own reference photos. In the past I’ve pulled references from the web, books, magazines, etc, but I plan on staging and photographing my own references as much as possible from here-on-out. I believe that my references often, unknowingly set the tone for my work and I want to change that. I want my own ideas to set the tone and the references to support that vision.
In the evenings, I’m also spending my time doing some real research into what is known about the druids. These books have not only given me a wealth of inspiration, but I’m learning a lot that I didn’t really expect to be learning during this process. It’s actually fascinating how widespread and important druidism was! Right now I’m reading The Druids: Celtic Priests of Nature by Jean Markale. In the near future I’ll also be reading A Brief History of the Druids by Peter Berresford Ellis.
If you want to continue to follow along with this project, I will be posting updates regularly on this site. You can also sign-up to receive email notifications whenever I post, by joining the mailing list here: https://wailingwizard.com/newsletter-signup/
