siren:sophia

My final for second semester's Oil Techniques for Illustrators class. So, um, oil, obviously, and wintergreen oil transfers of photocopied text/diagrams from alchemical manuals.

The subject of the piece is the "philosopher's siren", sometimes known as Sophia (incarnation of wisdom) and occasionally called the Melusine. She's interesting to me in that she's not a goddess, creature or otherwise physical character, she's someone's abstract way of talking about something completely different---the image of a figure of speech designed to hide an alchemical practice. Confusing, huh?

Anyway, she's depicted as a twin-tailed siren (mermaid) who is, no joke, squirting milk from one breast and blood from another. Like I said, this is a cryptic metaphor for some alchemical practice.

I got to play with all the glazing techniques I learned, as well as the transfer stuff, and generally I'm really happy with the way this came out. I was looking at one of my favorite artists, Anne Bachelier, for some color/style reference. If you like this you should definitely look her up, because even if I keep painting my entire lifetime I will never be that good.