She Sings From Somewhere You Can’t See

This week’s Character of the Week assignment is an envoy of the Khemethar, a race of aliens who descended to earth to study the ancient Egyptian culture, and from whence they derived their gods. The brief is as follows:

- Design One or More of the Khemethar envoy, based upon one of the Egyptian Gods (ie, Aten-Ra, Isis, Osiris, Set, etc)

- You do not have to depict them as the Egyptians did - think of interesting things that they might have had/worn that might have been interpreted the way they were by the egyptians either for symbolic reasons, or simply because it was the closest thing that it looked like, not having the same technology/clothing available to them.

I was going to start with Seshet, Mistress of Books, for obvious reasons. But I got diverted by the design possibilities of Heptet and her snake form, and the atef crown she wears. The atef crown will actually be a sort of glass encased electrokinetic matrix where she keeps a copy Osiris’s memories. She and Isis are escorting the Osiris biopod/saracophagus, and will “resurrect” and reactivate Osiris so that he may commence his studies. They aren’t towing him precisely–those are more like bio-leashes, which will keep Osiris alive by drawing from their bodies if his power cells give out while he is in his pod. I’m also thinking that the strips on her snake hood are actually special bio-engineered information collecting cells. When Osiris is present but not conscious, he needs somebody to collect memories for him, and that’s part of what Heptet is doing while she escorts him around.

Here’s what I turned into ChoW:

San Francisco: A laid-back city where you can remove the masks you wear. Kind of a techno-pagan. She’s got a long history and a history of activism and culture. She’s friendly to artists and crazy people. She’s environmentally friendly (and while you can’t tell, her clothes are probably made of all-natural hemp.) Of course, every so often she throws a tantrum, and you end up with a major earthquake, but most of the time, she’s just chilling, making her own beat.

Annotations to the symbols: gold dust (for the gold rush), heart-in-a-cage tattoo (double duty for Alcatraz and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco"), goggles (technologically inclined), marijuana leaf border on her tank top, sash turning to fog, djembes (Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park), rainbow peeps (gay pride), Chinatown, the railroad (railroad barons built SF), the Golden Gate bridge, cracked ground (earthquakes), portrait of Emperor Norton (the most famous craaaazy person in SF history), Chinese coin, and a parrot from Telegraph Hill.

I tend to paint with at least two windows open, and windows for reference for colours and shapes if necessary.

The strong outlines–the inks–will painted over later. I don’t plan on keeping them that bold.

For the Character of the Week challenge on the ConceptArt.org forums, we’re working on a personification of a city. Any city. As you know, I chose San Francisco, and here are the inks. I’ve refined the face–and since I took a picture of me to use as reference–I tried to make it Not Me. Made the hair curlier. I also redid the general shape of the djembe drums when I inked them. (Well, I knew I wanted drums, and they were roughed in, but now I’ve got the actual shape.)

Refined the sketch of San Francisco A LOT. Changed the pose entirely.

New ideas for this go-round:
Parrots: For the parrots of Telegraph Hill.
Chinese coin tied to her feet.
Portrait of Emperor Norton

For those just joining us, the Character of the Week challenge on ConceptArt.org this week is to illustrate a city as if it was a person.