Iconography Musings

[rowyn]

I did some sketching last night and today, in the name of putting off working on my novel -- er, I mean, making a new set of LJ icons.

I haven't decided on any changes yet. I was looking at someone else's art page several weeks ago, and that artist ahd picture of his "muse" posted. I thought that was cute. I want a muse!

So I thought for my icons, maybe I could use pictures of something I thought of more as muse than avatar.

I started by pretty much throwing out any intention of drawing anything that looked like recognizable species. ("Ok, that's an anthropomorphic cat.") So the answer to "what is that?" would be "My muse" and that'd be the whole conversation.

The next thing I picked was that my muse ought to be fun to draw. A muse is supposed to be inspiring. Drawing something that would be a pain in the neck every time would not inspire me. So my muse is famele, has membranuous wings, lots of hair, and long, mobile ears, because these things are fun for me to draw.

Various other traits were drawn from my friends, and other things that inspire me. I haven't really decided on the general appearance of the face yet. It occured to me afterwards that having decided on several distinctive features (hair, gender, ears, wings), I could make an icon-set 'hang together' even if the facial features kept changing around. Thus, my muse would be a shapeshifter who maintained certain traits as a constant.

I haven't decided if I like that or not yet. Anyway, here're the pictures I did so far. None of them are intended to become icons -- they're just me thinking on paper, deciding what I want my figurative muse to look like.

Comments

[gen.livejournal.com]

I like the top right one the best although it's the least detailed of the three... mostly because it just sort of has this "swoosh!" sort of expression and movement to it. It just seems very happy and free.

[rowyn]

Yah, I think I liked that one mainly for the pose, too. There were some other sketches that had the sort of fun-to-draw movement to them, but they were full-body poses. I pretty much decided on a very slender, flexible body, so rather than refining any of those, I went back to working on faces (as that's the part I can't decide on.)

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I would agree. The "Bernadette Peters" muse is very well-rendered, but will work against Rowyn's "easy and fun to draw" mandate.

The faceted wings are intriguing; these would be what gave stained-glass artists their inspiration!

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

I always think of stained glass when I think of insect wings, even though I know they're not all faceted like that. :)

The "Bernadette Peters" (heehee) look isn't hard for me to draw, actually. Easier to do a frontal view on a human-looking subject than on a muzzled one, in fact. But, conversely, I do find profiles on animal heads easier to do.