Thursday, July 29, 2010

Angels and Things

End of July already? Shhhhiii....... There's been a certain lack of productivity here for a while which hopefully I can turn around with the last few remaining weeks of summer break. Lately what's been taking up time is horse commissions and (starting next week) custodial work at the local middle school (...yay...). But enough griping.
The main thought behind today's posting is angels- yep, those creepy terrifying powerful beings that are best buds with God.
(UR DOIN IT WRONG)

As you can see by the image above, the state of angel imagery is in sore need of some help. Cue two Katies- myself and Katie Thierolf. Now Thierolf has been much more into angels than I have yet to be but we're on the same line of thought about this whole angel thing. We're not sure when they changed from dangerous to cuddly (although that might be something worth investigating in the near future), but we're bound and determined to change it back! I know she has an image saved of a painting by Alphonse Mucha that pretty much embodies the whole "Oh dear God akjgbwrogbg gajbrcjbwa....." kind of emotion when you see it.After several discussions and one epic journey through late night Columbus tossing ideas about we came up with a solid list of ideas that are at least a good starting point for some kind of collaboration weirdness hopefully to go down soon. I'm typing up the notes here for easier access and easier reading as well (looking at my hand writing now and this is going to take a while.....)

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-Planes: Several different ones (never specified how many). However humans are on one plane, angels on another. On rare occasions humans will wind up on the angelic plane (possible with heart attacks/ near death experiences= momentary lapse into angelic plane). Angel plane is "in reverse", reverse moon cycles (??), etc.
-Pets: Some angels, but mostly demons keep humans as pets~ definitely exploring idea of selectively breeding humans for traits (how far can this be pushed?.....)

-Halos: Unintentionally affect human plane- when switching planes, the halo has an aftereffect on the human plane, nearest light(s) will switch on/off for no apparent reason. If angels can affect the human plane however can humans affect the angel plane in any way?
-Random Crap: *One random post office box somewhere is a direct link to God. No one knows which box it is or what it does, but random mail sent there....leads to ??
*Cathedrals and Crypts. They're great so they're gonna be used.
*Medieval flashbacks??
*Statues>> Gargoyles= good demons??
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Anatomy's been another big issue. I mean just thinking about it, you're trying to put a humanoid in the air with a pair of wings. Muscle and bone structures are in for a decent overhaul (will probably make a new lenghty blog post mulling over possibilities anatomy-wise). But then you have the different classes of angels and all sorts of different descriptions so there's plenty of basic stuff to sort out first before getting into story lines and the like.
I was playing around on ye olde wacom the other day and came up with this:
Just vaguely attempting some kind of anatomy that would kinda sorta maybe work. In the mean time I've started a sculpture in another attempt to sort out anatomy for a typical angelic bloke but it's way too early to post pics of that guy.

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And for the hell of it, a random sneak peak of a painting I've been working on slowly (oils)