The Art of The Elder Man (Coming Tomorrow!)

Uncovering and divulging  an outlandish conspiracy will put a hard bump into any journalist’s career, and Armin can only blame himself when he’s dispatched from Frankfurt’s skyscrapers into the depths of rural France on the unglamorous job of writing about a cobbing workshop.

Natural building is messy, dirty and sweaty work, but it has its consolations. For example, Van, the greying but undeniably hot master cobber teaching the workshop. Sure, the man is a hopeless tree-hugger, with embarrassing notions about ancient folklore and religions, but he’s still worth a week-long fling, right?

When Van is revealed in all his majesty and power as a long forgotten forest god, however, the week-long fling might well become entangled with eternity, on the edge between life, death, madness, and immortality.

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I can't wait for tomorrow, and the release of The Elder Man, a story that I have worked on for well over a year. It all began even longer ago, with this drawing I made of Danila Kovalev in January of 2018.

"Cernunnos (1)" 

(model, Danila Kovalev)

pencil drawing

© Katherine Wyvern

It was a drawing of Cernunnos, god of the forest and keeper of the gates of the underworld in Gaulish mythology. This drawing was just an homage to the beauty and magic of the woods around my garden, but it slowly became so deeply rooted into my imagination that Cernunnos finally found his way into one of my notorious "short, light stories" and turned it into a wonderfully deep and textured tapestry of wild nature and ancient magic. Since then I made more drawings for this book, and they became part of the storytelling for me. I have gathered them here, and I hope they express some of the love and awe I feel for Van and his woods.

"Cernunnos (2)"

(model, Henry Ian Cusick) 

Pencil drawing, digital color 

© Katherine Wyvern

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"The Great God Pan (1)"

(model, Henry Ian Cusick)

pencil drawing, digital effects

© Katherine Wyvern

 -:-

"The Great God Pan (2)"

(model, Henry Ian Cusick)

pencil drawing, digital effects

© Katherine Wyvern

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“Why the antlered man? Who is it?” repeated Armin, a little confused, looking at Van.

Van shrugged. “He’s … Amun, and Silvanus and Pan, and the Leshy and Veles and Svyatibor  … even the Minotaur, perhaps. There is a picture of him as old as fifteen thousand years in a cave in the Ariege, la grotte des Trois-Frères. The Sorcerer. Prancing fellow with antlers and a thumping big dong.”

Every woman in the room, including the young girls, giggled.

He grimaced theatrically. “Sorry. All these old horned males. What can I say?”

“Anyway, some would say he’s the Devil, too, and Baphomet. And lately, just the Horned God. It all got twisted about since the Christians started messing with the old deities. And the Wiccans just made one big stew of it all to cover all the bases and be on the safe side. They may not be wrong however. In France, the Gauls came to call him Cernunnos or Carnonos or Cerunincos, which all simply mean the horned one or the antlered one. I suppose we might go with Cernunnos.”

“Wherever you look, there was always a god of the forest, the earth, the water… a god of low places, valleys, sources, meadows. His trees were always small trees. Healing trees. The willow, the elder, the rowan. Not a sky god. Not a war god. He was also, as often as not, a god of agriculture and fertility. And death and healing, even resurrection.  Fall, winter, and spring, the seasons. Nature again. It was easy in the old days to believe in such a divinity. And it was wise to pay tribute to him. Forests, fields, death, rebirth, the cycles and forces of nature were rather more … central.”

 -:-

"Stag Night"

pencil drawing, digital effects 

© Katherine Wyvern

-:-

"At the head of the bed was sculpted a huge tree, which rose from a tangle of roots and interwoven grasses or creepers and spread on the walls and under the ceiling.

It took a sort of knack, a subtle shift in vision and a certain familiarity with Van’s twisting and fractal designs, to realize that the tree was actually two slender stags, rearing up belly-to-belly, muzzles raised, legs grappling. Their massive leafy antlers spread up and out like a petrified fountain and ended in a foamy, lacy, semiformal trellis of finely tooled flower heads.

The stags might be fighting, but seeing how their long cocks and serpentine tongues were entwined in two labyrinthine knots, they might also be doing something else entirely.

Armin blinked, dumbfounded, then blinked again, and uncannily, the tree was just a tree once more..."

-:-

"Cernunnos (3)"

pencil drawing, digital effects 

© Katherine Wyvern

-:-

“There has always been something mystical about the stag and his antlers, in all the old Indo-European cultures. The stag was important enough to have his own constellation, roughly where modern astronomers place Ophiuchus. The Celts put it nicely, saying that the stag carried the solar disk in his crown. His antlers and his strength are greatest in the autumn, they are lost in the winter and emerge again in the spring. He incarnates the death of nature and its awakening. He and Cernunnos are avatars of the fall, of the death of nature and its rebirth. Cycles again.”

-:-

 I am immensely grateful toe Evernight Publishing and Jay Aheer of Simply Defined Art for including my moon cycle illustration in the cover of the book.

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Daphne (Metamorphosis) - a pencil drawing

I have been slack lately in posting my drawings on the blog. I will pick up again, starting from my freshly finished, slightly gender-bending Daphne.

 

"Daphne (Metamorphosis)" 

Pencil on paper

35x50cm

© Katherine Wyvern 2019

"...a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left."

 

When people read the myth of Daphne's Metamorphosis (narrated by Ovid, quoted above, and others), They usually take away two moral lessons. First, that Apollo was an abusive brute who could not take no for an answer.  Second, that in however much trouble one may be, asking help from the gods is a mistake because their idea of 'help' can be a tad bizarre. 

Both these things are probably true, but many readers miss the most poetic bit of this story. 

Which is, that even after she ran from him, and morphed into a tree, Apollo still loved her. That is why the bay tree became sacred to him.

"My bride," he said, "since you can never be, at least, sweet laurel, you shall be my tree. My lure, my locks, my quiver you shall wreathe."

He may have been the first tree-hugger in history. But there is a terrible beauty in this. 

This was supposed to be my Valentine post, but I could not finish the drawing in time. Perhaps a little grim as a Valentine story, but love is a complicated business, and red roses don't begin to cover it. 

Model, the ever-wondrous Danila Kovalev. 

Pencils, Faber Castell Graphite Pure, mostly 6B, 8B and 9B.

The "laurel" is not an accurate botanical representation. 

 

Top five things on my bucket list - the #evernighties

Top five things on my bucket list.

First of all I would like to mention that it's a little weird to discuss my bucket list on my birthday, but anyway. Have a nice Valentine, my dear, long-suffering readers. 

Ok, this is a hard one for me. Not so much because I have too many things to choose from, but simply because I don’t have much of a bucket list at all. Perhaps that is a symptom of having had a fulfilling life? I don’t know. There many things that I desire (a better political situation in this crazy world, my hedges and fruit trees to grow, all hunters that prowl along my fence on Sundays to drop dead) but they are not things you can just put on the bucket list. 

But I’ll give it a try.

As a builder I’d love to finish my hobbit house. A little cob cottage with a grass roof that I am building on the footprint of an ancient ruin. A home that blends seamlessly in the forest around it, and is built from materials sourced in the forest itself.

As an artist, I’d love to have a chance to photograph my favorite model of all times, D. Kovalev. That would fit well with one of my two dream travel destinations, Moscow. It is full of fascinating ancient architecture... and some astonishing modern things... Does that count as two things on the bucket list then? 

 Photo courtesy of Katerina Ross on Facebook

Unfortunately, I fear that I am not talented enough a photographer to deserve the privilege of working with D. Kovalev, so perhaps I will be content portraying him second-hand, so to say, through my drawings.

Empathy - Pencil drawing

© Katherine Wyvern 2018

Travel-wise, there is Moscow, mentioned above, and Grenada. I have had a lifelong fascination with the Alhambra palace. Like all places where East meets West it seems to incorporate elements of European art and culture, which I love, with the magic and spice of the exotic Orient. Best of both worlds.

 Creative Commons Image

And I would love to be a the Venice Carnival again, this time in full costume. 

A pretty humble bucket list, considering, but right now, all of these things seem pretty unreachable, except the building of my cottage perhaps. I just have to get my ass up, and go, and do it. Easy peasy.