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Grendel's Passage

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A marker warns travellers of the dangers beyond. It lies on the edge of Heorot, the kingdom terrorized by the monster Grendel. 
 
Inspired by the poem Beowulf, and all the works that followed it.  

This idea has been drumming around my head for a number of years now, and almost came to reality as a casein painting early last year. However, the drawing I did for it then sucked and it never went anywhere.  Sometimes, an idea can't survive the creative-development process, and the artist becomes disillusioned with it all. Sometimes the original idea transmutes so much while its being worked on, its very essence becomes lost and the image is invalidated. I felt that happened here. But something clicked a year later, so I went back to my initial sketch and did my best to fix the problems digitally.  

This version of the idea began with the premise that all the "interesting" bits of the picture were going to be around the edges of it, in blatant contradiction to most rules of composition. The reason behind this heresy was that the composition made you want to see what lay beyond the edges, since those elements described the story behind the image: the heads, the headless corpse at the left, etc. These elements would have the cropline running right through them, theoretically creating mystery. After drawing it up and seeing it, I wasn't convinced that the idea would work and began rendering everything, thinking I could crop it later if I wanted. And I didn't, so here's the full thing. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I've basically dropped my experiment.

The runic text inscription reads: "Beyond Odin's Vale waits Grendel; Man Foe; Flesh Grinder."

The symbol carving above the inscription was copied shamelessly from the animated musical "Grendel, Grendel, Grendel", starring Peter Ustinov, as an homage. The movie is based on John Gardner's novel "Grendel" which depicts the events of the poem from the monster Grendel's own perspective. It is irreverent and beautiful, even though it was made in 1981 and quite an inspiration to me. The book's impact on Beowulf adaptations cannot be understated, as elements of it shows up in movies such as "Beowulf & Grendel" with Gerard Butler, and even the CGI version.

You can watch the movie at this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBV6Ya…

Done in Photoshop CC 2018.
Image size
864x1350px 554.96 KB
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