Sketches – Bellerophon

I saw Clash of the Titans, and anything to do with Greek mythology (no matter how tangential, like the Clash) always unleashes this barely concealed mania in me to do nothing but draw, paint, and read about the gods and heroes. But there are those other things in life like, I don't know, kids, job, house renovations, that sort of thing, that just gets in the way of a 24/7 mythology-fest.

Hence the joy of the sketchbook, since you can get it all out without committing yourself to a major piece of art (while at the same time telling yourself, truthfully or un, that you're prepping for a major piece of art later). At the moment I've got my mind set on Bellerophon and the Chimera.

(There is a reason why I would opt for Bellerophon after seeing a movie about Perseus, although it's not the Pegasus connection. No, it's for a far more geeky reason which I'll explain after the main post, so only those interested – or equally geeky – need read it.)

So the lion head is for 1/3 of the Chimera, and the other is a rough sketch of Bellerophon flying on Pegasus to slay it. Darn skinny notebook - had I drawn in something a little more horizontal, I'd have had room for the monster.

As I said, my mind is never terribly far away from these sort of things, so here's an Illustrator Chimera I did several years back, as a computer sketch.

A little different take on the traditional monster, but I figure it's an insane mix of three animals (with three totally different digestive systems, among other things) so why not mix it up even more?

And now, the geek reason:

Because I wanted to re-read about the actual legend of Perseus after seeing Clash, I turned to my copy of The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus. I'm a primary-source kind of guy that way (along those lines, I did try and find it in Diodorus of Sicily, but he has almost nothing about Perseus. In fact, he thought that Medusa was actually an Amazon warrior. Nothing against Amazon warriors – they're really interesting too – but for me, you just have to have snakes for hair to make it Medusa).

Anyway, in the Perseus section, for reasons beyond my knowledge, Apollodorus suddenly breaks off and goes into the story of Bellerophon, tells it all, and then picks up the Perseus story as if nothing happened. So the ideas for drawing must have snuck into my subconscious while I was really researching Perseus inspiration.