Illustration Friday - Wings

Wings are probably one of the many themes that trigger many inspirations from nature to fantasy. However, when I thought about 'wings' my mind went back to my Hermes drawing for 'wool'. I enjoyed drawing that character to the point that I want to continue using him more. I can't help it, he's too cute! However, I wanted to incorporate him into his adult form, the adult Greek God that we recognize him as, while still keeping him cute and adorable like before. So I sat down and started to draw adult Hermes. What came out from it was actually pretty good and mimicked the style of my previous drawing and rendering.
Hermes, now in full God Mode, is wearing his distinct winged sandals, winged cap and chiton garments. In his left hand is his kerykeion or Caduceus, his sceptre that has become a popular symbol over time since antiquity. It is often mistaken for the Rod of Asclepius which is the symbol for medicinal practises. However, a caduceus has two snakes entwined around the rod while the Asclepius Rod has only one snake. For my rendition of the caduceus, I had the snakes start out as a rod and branch out into two heads, like a two-headed snake ((I find snakes to be fascinating, maybe it's because I'm an Earth Snake in the Chinese Zodiac; too bad my mom and my grandma are afraid of snakes)) with an orb where they meet and wings flanked on both sides. I gave Hermes an adorable wink, giving off that essence that despite being a God, he still has his mischievous side.

After making the rough, I traced over him into a cleaned up pencil drawing. Here in the next picture, there's a little snippet of another rendering that was caught on my scanner. I drew the roughs for the Wool, Wings and Storm themes together on the same page to save up some room on my drawing clipboard.

As with the other Hermes drawings, I decided to scan it into Adobe Illustrator to make the final picture. Here's a WIP of the rough outline which will be refined later.

Another screenshot of the picture, this time with some basic colouring. I'm hoping to make the colour scheme a bit brighter on this piece and hopefully add some shading and highlights. There are also some vectored shapes that need some refining which will me taken care of now that the colours are set in.

On a new layer, I added highlights and shading to the rest of the picture. All of the reflective parts of Hermes' body (eyes, hair, helmet, bracers and rod) are given white highlights. As for the rest of the body, I shaded using deeper colours that match the areas needed to be shaded. I don't like using black or grey for shading a bright picture like this, besides, the colours give it a more appealing feel to the composition.

After a few adjustments, I made a new layer behind the previous two and made the background to the picture with him in a clear sky with a starburst behind him. The picture is finally complete and a God is born!

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