Cernunnos - a pencil drawing

 "Cernunnos"

35x50cm

Ⓒ Katherine Wyvern 2018

Lately we have been binge-watching Hannibal, of which we liked the first season (with some reserve at first), but not so much the rest (despite the uber-sexy Mads Mikkelsen, eh!), and the antlers imagery has been rather present in my mind…

So I drew this, not so much for Hannibal, but as Cernunnos.

It hints to Herne in the old Robin Hood series, and even Harry Potter’s patronus, but it’s none of these things really, or not only. It’s also not really the Celtic or even Wiccan Cernunnos for me, but an altogether earthier and more elemental being ... a personification of the life of the forest.

Like all natural spirits, I believe that despite the antlers, it should not be quite male or female, but both, or above it…

I added all the things that are brightest in my garden/forest now (those were copied from life), hellebores and arum leaves, and ivy, and pale lichen, which is at its brightest celadon now… Its lovely fractal shapes are the essence of all life forms, trees and lungs and veins and roots…

It’s the things I could draw from life at this time of year, but also, maybe, this is the time of year when we (or I, at least) most need to remember that the forest still lives, and will be green again.

There was to be a stag skull on Cernunnos’ head, but alas the paper was not large enough (that cramped my style a little),  so I had to be content with an eagle skull. A skull for mortality, but an eagle is a finely odinic animal, and Odin himself a good omen that life will come back from darkness, stronger, stranger and wiser.

The runes are Norse runes too. Ogham lettering is so ugly.

And it's an homage, once more, most of all,  to Danila Kovalev’s 

otherworldly beauty, and unique intensity.

Thank you!

 Faber-Castell Graphite Pure pencils, from B to 9B!