As you can see from my process images, my first illustration of Zeus was at the beginning of this project, and I naively envisioned him like so many other modern artists, with white hair and beard. It didn't take long for me to dive into the research and look at how the ancient Greeks portrayed him on pottery, as middle aged, to realize that a white haired Zeus wouldn't be an accurate portrayal. This was an early, and very powerful lesson for me, to realize that the best way to move forward on this project would be to adhere as closely as possible to the ancient literary sources and pottery depictions, and ironically, the designs would be all the fresher for it.
As you can see from my process images, my first illustration of Zeus was at the beginning of this project, and I naively envisioned him like so many other modern artists, with white hair and beard. It didn't take long for me to dive into the research and look at how the ancient Greeks portrayed him on pottery, as middle aged, to realize that a white haired Zeus wouldn't be an accurate portrayal. This was an early, and very powerful lesson for me, to realize that the best way to move forward on this project would be to adhere as closely as possible to the ancient literary sources and pottery depictions, and ironically, the designs would be all the fresher for it.
