Floating Tigers

This started out as a brief for my university class last fall, I really liked the original pencil drawing so I decided to color and just spruce it up to put on the blog. We were given a theme and had to go around The British Museum to find/draw related things and combine them in a single drawing. Mine was resisting authority figures so I made up this image from what I drew at the museum.

Grizzlybear Woman

For a while I have been messing around with drawings for a Native American myth about a woman who marries a grizzly bear. Her father has the bear slaughtered and in her grief she takes a piece of his skin and gains the power to turn into a bear. She ravages her village and kills everyone but her little brother and sister, Okinai and Sinopa, and her six brothers who are away on the war path.

When the six brothers return Sinopa tells them what has happened and of their sister's plot to kill them all. The brothers told her to collect prickly pears and cover the area in front of their lodge with them, leaving only a small path for her and her brother to escape by during the night. As they were escaping the Grizzlybear Woman heard and rushed out side after them, treading on the prickly pears. Roaring with pain and anger, she assumed her bear shape and rushed at her brothers.

But Okinai rose to the occasion. He shot an arrow into the air, and so far as it flew the brothers and sister found themselves just that distance in front their sister behind them. As the Grizzlybear Woman gained on them Okinai waved a magic feather and thick underbrush rose in her path. But, again, she followed them and Okinai caused a lake to spring up before her.

She continued to pursue them and this time Okinai raised a great tree which they all climbed to escape. The Grizzlybear Woman, however dragged four of the brothers from the tree. When Okinai shot an arrow into the air his little sister sailed into the sky. Six times more he shot an arrow, and each time a brother went up, Okinai himself following them with his last arrow.

Thus the orphans became stars; and one can see that they took the same position in the sky as they had occupied in the tree, the small star at one side of the bunch is Sinopa, while the four who huddle together at the bottom are those who had been dragged from the branches by the Grizzlybear Woman.

I unfortunately don't know what group of Native Americans this story is from or what constellation the orphans formed, but I really like the story anyway so I'm going to keep doing drawings for it. Hope you enjoy them.

Peacocks!

A bunch of peacock drawn for thank you cards I gave my family for their support during my graduation.