This illustration was born from the designs of two different pieces that originally had nothing to do with each other, but were meant to be together.
The Day Guardian- a hybrid fox/ eagle creature was originally designed as a fire elemental for another illustration in the spring of 2021. Take a look at that journal entry to read more about what inspired this design.
The Night Guardian- this design began with a “Drawtober” drawing prompt in October 2021. I created my own prompt list that year by combining some of my favorite ideas and images from other lists I came across. The prompt for October 4th was “Fawn/ Owl Demon”.
I had taken a day trip to Shenandoah National Park earlier that year with my boyfriend Zach. He wanted to be there early to take photos of the sunrise from Hawksbill Summit. After he had gotten his photos we drove down from that trail to the visitor center at Big Meadows. It was still about 5:30am and while we were enjoying the early morning quiet and fog of the usually busy area- we spotted a deer and her two tiny fawns start to make their way across the road into the meadow. The two fawns were impossibly small. They tiptoed on spider thin legs to the road and then laid down together in an awkward pile while their mom worked to nudge them up and toward the meadow. A bit later that morning when the visitor center was open, some of the rangers were talking about the deer that was pregnant and it was only a matter of time before she gave birth, and I was excited to tell them that the fawns were in fact born, and tiny, and safely into the meadows.
The image of that tiny fawn, walking hunched over on spindly legs- stayed in my head. It seemed like the perfect point of natural eeriness for this demon prompt. For the owl aspect, I wanted to match the idea of a fledgling- not quite equipped for the world- with a fluffy, large eyed and razor beaked, baby barn owl. The sketches I made for the prompt were just exploratory drawings- the early stages of a creature design process. I wanted to focus on capturing the fawn and owlet features and make a sort of snapshot of what a creature with a combination of those features would look like- how it would navigate its awkward limbs and extending neck to preen its cloud of young feathers. - Aside from these pencil drawings in my sketchbook (the black and white digitally inverted here), the rest of this project was done in Photoshop.
Later, in the winter of 2022, I realized that these two creature designs, the bright and regal fox/ eagle mix, and the luminous and eerie deer/ owl mix- were perfect parallels to one another. There was an inherent sun and moon or night and day feeling to the pair, they seemed like mirror images of one another.
That idea then attached itself to tarot cards and how each card, when upside down or inverted, has a different meaning. I wanted to create a single tarot card depicting the Sun and Moon- (though, typically the Sun and Moon would have their own cards). These creatures would exist in a single illustration, each an inverted version of the other.
After sketching the layout of the image, I then collected more reference images for each aspect of the creatures: Sun- a Red Fox and Harpy Eagle and Moon- an Albino Fawn and Barn Owlet.
As a little aside: I am remembering now, as I write this, that for my final project for a figure drawing class my Sophomore year at VCU, we were tasked to create three of our own tarot card designs. We had to select three of the existing cards- I chose the Ace of Wands, the Sun, and the Moon- and portray ourselves as the subject of each card. I utilized this same idea of mirroring and inversion in the design for the Sun and Moon cards then as well. Maybe that project is what inspired the sudden urge to turn the creature designs into a tarot card. Maybe I wanted to see how I would depict that concept two years later. (These three illustrations were done in 2019 with watercolor and pen on paper.)
Line drawing- after layers of reference images and rough sketches of the two creatures, I then finalize the line work. My goal here is to build in texture with the weight and quality of the lines. I also wanted to push myself with this project to create a more illustrative border. I used simple shapes associated with the sun, moon, and sky for the design, and the symmetry tool was very helpful in keeping the look of a mirrored frame.
Solid color- this is a technique that I use when digitally painting. I select random colors to fill each zone of the illustration- to see how the composition looks, and to lock each zone on its own layer for an easier painting process. This time, I decided that I really liked those random colors and this process image inadvertently became a stand- alone version of the piece. I used this image as the “card back” when I printed out the illustration for myself. I have the card hanging from the ceiling on a string, this image on one side with the Moon at the top, and the final colored image on the other side with the Sun at the top.
Color base- closer to desired colors and I changed the flat lines to the textured brush to match the rest of the piece.
Painting- At this stage I begin establishing tones and textures on the creatures. This is also when I started sketching in the backgrounds- I knew they would be flat color, so as to not draw too much attention, but I still wanted to establish some sort of environment for each creature. The Sun being out and exposed on a dry, rocky mountainside, and the Moon being deep in the cool wilderness shrouded by the cover of trees and clouds.
The jump from this image to the final piece seems dramatic (and can be a reminder to myself to keep taking process photos while I get caught up in painting)- but the main changes are: the final shading and highlights in the creatures and backgrounds, colored line work to accent that shading, and final touches- in this case being the speckled stars in the border and the lighting effects on the Sun’s fire and Moon’s eyes. These slight effects gave the creatures so much life and pushed them even further into the realm of other worldly beings.
And that is to say, I’m still not sure exactly what these two “beings” are yet.
Are they guardians of the Day and Night? Are they embodiments of the Sun and the Moon? Do they ever meet? Do they walk the earth with other creatures of the land or are they only seen by other beings like themselves? These are questions I would love to answer in the future.
Maybe someday I'll come back to these designs and build more of their world or even create an entire Tarot deck with characters and creatures that could exist beside them.
Written October 2024