Developing project ideas: the idea I’m working on for my project is to illustrate a series of myths, creating 1 illustration for each. I want that illustration to act as a ‘cover’ for the story. Not in the sense of a book cover but more as a single image that tells the story showing the gods, creatures and story. These images could then be applied to many contexts. The series will have a consistent visual style. I am aiming for my work to be versatile in regard to format and audience. Below I made a list of some of the most important Norse myths and marked ones of initial interest to me:
Colours in Norse Mythology: a topic that interests me is the colours used by the Vikings. I researched this as I’d like to achieve an authentic colour palette in my illustrations. The Vikings were more colourful than people may think, with colour being a symbol of status/wealth. Bold and bright colours were more expensive and often needed to be imported. Below is a list of colour symbolism for the Vikings, these are ideas I could bring into my illustrations. I found a colour palette that was created based of chemical and archaeological analysis of Viking artefacts. The palette has 17 colours.
Norse colour palette: The palette has a nice range of earthen tones and string warm colours. Using just this palette you could create eye catching and authentic illustrations.
I added this palette to Procreate and Photoshop, the 2 main drawing softwares that I use.
This is a list of colours associated with different Norse gods and goddesses. I plan to use these ideas and the general Norse colour symbolism in my project.
Symbols in Norse Mythology: symbols are important in Norse mythology, often being used in Norse artworks. Symbols were used by Vikings to represent gods, beliefs, creatures, myths and objects. Including some subtle symbol in my work could be an interesting element. Below is a list of 10 important symbols in Norse mythology, a brief description of what it represents and an image of each:
Myths: from the list is key myths I made I chose 6 to research in depth. These are the creation of the cosmos, creation of Thor’s hammer, binding of Fenrir, Thor fishing Jörmungandr, Loki bound and Ragnarok. I chose this set as they evenly cover the timeline of Norse mythology, an interesting range of gods, goddesses, creatures, objects and environments. I researched each one in detail, making notes on the story, characters, themes and some examples of artwork depicting each one. For this research I look at the original sources such as the Prose and Poetic Edda and summaries on various websites.
Creation of the cosmos:
Creation of Thor’s hammer:
Binding of Fenrir:
Thor fishing for Jörmungandr:
Loki bound:
Ragnarok:
Additional visual research: as well as researching images depicting specific myths, I gathering lots of general resources of Norse mythology artwork.
Johan Egerkrans: I will be taking lots of inspiration from Egerkrans’s work. There are many elements I admire including the colour palette, compositions, stylisation of characters and ability to create a narrative within a single image.
Milivoj Ceran: Ceran has a more simple style in regard to colour, replacing bold colour palettes for finely detailed hatching. This is a technique I’d like to incorporate into my work. I really like how he frames his images and creates dynamic compositions that tell a story.
Book covers: Although I’m not producing a series of book covers, they are a good source of reference as their purpose is to summarise the story into a single image. In particular, the covers of Joanne M. Harris’s book really stood out to me. I really like the dark colour palettes that allow the small bits of bright colours to be very striking. Also I like the incorporation of fine patterns it’s the images and the traditional style borders. Below are some examples of these and some other Norse mythology covers that I like:
The next steps for this project will be to decide on the mediums I want to use and begin sketching some ideas for each illustration.
Samuel Green Illustration 