"Ian Raven painted me."
More art for the Pikestaff! I’ve now done two covers, both for the month of March, six years apart. I’m told that I could, if I chose, “own” the March cover. This amuses me. (Of course, this becomes academic should the print edition of the newsletter go the way of the dodo, as it could due to budget cuts and pressure to move to electronic distibution.)
I chose a Norse winter theme this time, based around an image I had in my sketchbook of my wife and my older daughter, arrayed in all their naalbound viking finery, engaged in a snowball fight. From there, I created several small art bits to use for filling space.
My inspiration for all of this was initially the sketch (after the jump), but while researching the extra drawings, I became intrigued by the concept of viking graffitti, particularly that found in the burial mound at Maeshowe, Orkney. The runes at the bottom, which read, “Ian Raven painted me”, are based on the runic writing found in that mound, remnants of a 12th century break-in by a band of vikings seeking shelter from a snowstorm. The border around the cover image draws from several standing stones found in Gotland (an island county in Sweden). The oar is copied from an extant longship find, and the carved wooden bear and the comb are drawn from memory of when I studied vikings as a youngster. The runes (the letters f and o, for no other reason than that I liked them) are based on a set I made in college, which in turn were based on a set I studied at the time.
