Worthy

This is an art request for , as a reward for winning a contest to design a logo. ~redwattlebird asked for a picture of the hero Aeneas from Roman mythology, plucking from a tree in a gloomy forest the golden bough that allows him to journey to the underworld. There is a moment of tension where the branch clings to the tree and he’s uncertain whether he’ll be able to pick it, which is what I was supposed to depict here. To be honest I don’t think I really succeeded at conveying a sense of tension, but I am hoping that the gloomy forest atmosphere is distracting enough to make up for that. Excuses aside, I have finally finished this art request that I’ve owed for over a year! Now I can spend this next paragraph making excuses for why it took me so long.

Let me just start by saying that this was a really interesting request. I have always enjoyed artwork depicting scenes from stories, and when I got the instructions to illustrate this scene from mythology, I found it such a cool idea that I really wanted to do a good job on it. At the time that I got the request, though, I didn’t feel like my art skills were up to a high enough level to do it the way I wanted to, so I told myself I’d practice a bit more and then I’d start working on it. As I got caught up in schoolwork, this excuse turned to outright procrastination, and recently I finally sat myself down and told myself that I had to get the request finished before the end of summer whether or not it came out the way I wanted it to. I can’t say it did turn out exactly as I had in mind—it was a challenging subject and I was questioning pretty much every decision I was making, from the composition to the colors, and I’m still not sure I made the right choices, to say nothing of my rusty anatomy—but I do think it came out better than it would have if I’d tried to do it last year, so I hope that’s sufficient reward for the long wait. Many thanks to ~redwattlebird for being so patient, and for asking for such an interesting subject!