A Statue of Nike Athena

PLEASE LOOK IN FULL VIEW

Be prepared... I AM GOING TO BORE YOU! ^~^ :

Well if you remember this: [link] after nearly spending nearly 4 months transforming her into what you see here.

This is a drawing of a stone statue of "Nike Athena" in gold leaf and bronze. Seeing that this is my design, I'm pretty sure there isn't statue that looks like this in real life, at least not yet anyway. Nike is the goddess of victory, so her name is victorious meaning, well of course "victory," in other words "Nike Athena" depending upon how you translate it, means "Athena Victorious" or "Victorious Athena." The olive green, which she is wearing on her head is a status symbol of victory, I kind of made it into gold-leafed tiara. And those little "check mark" symbols that you see on every pair of "Nike (c)" shoes is actually the symbol of victory (I take it that its probably a symbol of victory because it looks like a letter "V" or its just something to use to "check off" your "conquest list of victory") and it is shared by both Athena and Nike.

Anyway, I have been literally dragging the completion of this drawing out way too long. I started it on February 23rd, 2011 and finished it on June 14th, 2011 at 7:15pm, "it should have" been finished on the 25th of February, but hey I got my excuses- *eh-hem!*, I mean reasons. The "classic reasons" why I never finished this drawing are because, of college and more crap, chores, younger my sister's high school graduation, and the death of an acquaintance; the "other more fitting excuses" why I never finished this are that I struggled drawing the rest of the body, I goofed around on the internet way too long, and I kept putting other projects before this one. Basically the reason why I finished this because I spent the past several sleepless nights being a "self-induced insomniac" trying to finish this.

Things I struggled with the most are the hand and arm holding the spear (still not happy with it), the helmet clutched at such an angle inside her right arm and hand, and her legs and feet (still not happy with those either). Although there were slight changes to it and her over the years; as I said the basic outfit, character, and weapons design were designed by me. When I drew her I was stumped to what I should do with her intionally as in whether I should make her appear as she would "in the flesh" or as a statue like form. I think I made a good decision there. The next challenge was to find a fitting background, either an ancient Greek city courthouse back in the day or a small modern day town park. Obviously I went with the park scene. I later figured out what exactly to put in the background thanks to: submitting a few photos of those statues and columns: [link] [link] [link] gave me an idea to put like semi circle of columns and arches around the statue and it also helped me figure out what the approximate color that I should give the stone structure and the statue. He also indirectly help me figure out the approximate time of day I should use by submitting a photo of a pink and purple sky Over Oregon: [link] , however because of the time of day I chose would be in the evening that also meant that I would have to adjust the lighting and put shadows at a certain angle and even overlap shadows and somewhat keep everything in perspective, which was a pain in the ass. Now I looked up a few photos of statues of Athena over the years and found that quite a few of them in Greece, Italy, and other places had incorporated bronze parts into their marble stone statues of Athena, they also would either gold plate them or paint them in gold leaf, so that's what I did with my statue. I wanted to also give every thing a somewhat "aged" look by dulling out the colors on a few of the things and give all of the metal parts such as the chains around the statue, the lamppost, the frame on the bench and the armor of a Athena to look a bit corroded and dull in appearance by adding a bit more gray dark brown, and green here and there. After standing around outside for several decades she is not going to look pristine, the gold leaf is going to wear off so that's why you see little splotches of green and brown. The furthest portion of the background behind the columns I added some greenery and some trees. I also added the owl (which I sucked at drawing) perched up on one of the decorative arms of the lamp post. The great thing is that I added plenty of rich color and shadows to the picture the problem is that my stupid scanner messed up the tone of the colors to the picture by bleaching out the colors as usual (piece of ****, I'll get you for that D:<.)

Other than a couple of minor problems that I ran across in this picture I think this one turned fairly well, but as always, there's PLENTY of room for improvement. Too bad I wasn't born with talent over-night for this stuff like a few of my friends that I know: otherwise this would be a singe. >:/ But as the age old saying goes;
"Some days you are the pigeon and some days you are the statue."

~Unknown


Copy Right © 2011 By: Deorse (Steven Waller)