Zeus and Hera: Love is a Battlefield

Greetings everyone!

For the sake of our sanity (and trying to set realistic goals), we have decided that we will be posting an entry every Wednesday (Thursday if our schedules are too tight), covering various topics from ancient greek mythology (for the most part we’ll be talking about the Olympians and some of our favourite mythological couples), and a second one sometime during every weekend, when we'll be talking about all things Eros and Psyche: how's the project coming along, fun facts and everything related to it.

Before we go any further, here’s an insight of how we plan things:

Eirini: “What are you planning to write about on Wednesday?”

Me: “I don’t know; whatever you feel like drawing.”

…because we’re professional like that! :-p

So, with that in mind, today we’ll be talking about Zeus and Hera; King and Queen of gods and men, brother and sister, husband and wife.

...over a year ago...
(time certainly flies)

Their parents, Cronus and Rhea, had six children together. Cronus, because of an oracle that said that he would be overthrown by his own son, like he had done to his father (history tends to repeat itself after all), swallowed all his children as soon as they were born.

Rhea though, was to put a halt to his plan; when she was about to give birth to Zeus, she escaped to Crete and gave birth to him there; She hid him in a cave, and left him in the care of a goat, Amalthia, until Zeus reached adulthood. Rhea returned home to Cronus, handing him in a rock covered in swaddling clothes.

When Zeus reached manhood, he presented himself to Cronus and forced him to disgorge his siblings. After overthrowing him, he and his brothers drew lots and shared the world; Zeus got the sky and air, so it’s only natural that he’s considered to be the god of sky and thunder.

Clearly, Zeus is a hottie! (sometimes I think I have too much fun with captioning :-p )
And I simply love the sketch on the top right hand corner where he is being chased by Hera. :-)

Zeus is also notorious for him numerous erotic escapades, which resulted in countless offspring. Hera, who was very beautiful (for some strange reason though, that fact is usually overlooked, and people tend to remember her only as strict and solemn) had caught his attention. He began pursuing her, but she kept turning him down (too much of a womaniser for her taste).

Beautiful, solemn and majestic!

Of course, that didn’t stop Zeus; he decided on a different approach, and, disguising himself as a rain-soaked cuckoo, landed to Hera's feet. She felt sorry for the bird and sheltered him to her bosom in an attempt to warm and dry him. Zeus immediately returned to his true form and claimed her as his own. She succumbed to his advances and, full of shame, agreed to marry him.

The fact that he had married Hera for love, did not Zeus stop from having affairs, which was the main cause of dispute between them.

Zeus, and his lovers and offspring as well, often paid the price of Hera’s jealous and vindictive nature; not that she’s entirely to blame though; Zeus was far from an ideal husband. His “authority” made him think that he could get away with being disrespectful towards the goddess of marriage but was he ever wrong!

Hera might be Queen of gods and men, but that doesn’t mean she held as much power as Zeus; not even close. Still, she was well respected by gods and men alike; (even Zeus himself was known to seek her opinion on various occasions), but in the end, she was just the king’s wife; the final word was always his.

Hera in all her glory!

Lastly, both Zeus and Hera play a part in our myth.

Hera, despite the fact she’s the goddess of women and marriage, is not as helpful as she should be (given her role) towards Psyche, because she wants to stay in good graces with Aphrodite.

Zeus on the other hand, is quite helpful towards Eros and Psyche, using his power in their favour and convincing Aphrodite to leave them in peace.

After all, if Eros is happily married to Psyche, shooting arrows towards his direction will be the last thing on his mind. :-p 

Obstacles? What's that?

As promised, it’s finally time to talk about overcoming obstacles.

It doesn’t seem that way, but we’ve had quite a few ‘now what?’ moments over the course of this project.

After editing the first draft, with the tone and style of the story mostly sorted (yay!), it was time to focus on the illustrations.

The keyword here is 'focus', because the truth is that Eirini was already working on an illustration by that time, since I was taking forever with the story, but still, you get the idea. :-) 

Naturally, because we don't like doing things the conventional way, Eirini had picked a scene from the middle of myth to start working on, but that's us for you! :-p

All jokes aside, that scene is one of the most powerful and emotional scenes in the entire myth; Psyche is standing alone at the edge of a rock, after having said goodbye to everyone she knew, waiting for a mysterious husband to come and claim her.

Eirini had a very clear idea about the composition of this scene from the very beginning, but we were both nervous about it, because, let’s face it, that illustration was going to define the style of the entire book. Whatever came next, it would have to be similar in style.

We spent hours upon hours talking about it, and Eirini spent even more time trying to make it perfect (and she was frustrated on more than one occasions when various things didn't work out the way she’d planned them to); so, when it was finally finished, it looked great; a perfect depiction of what was going on in that scene. 

Dark and moody and exactly how it was supposed to be, right?

version #1...

Well, no.

When we tried the picture next to the text, something was off.

What did we do then?

Well, Eirini redrew the whole thing, keeping the basics of the composition, but choosing a completely different set of colours and setting a completely different mood.

... and version #2 (not entirely finished, because we wouldn't want to give everything away :-p )

Did it work?

We certainly hope so! :-)

The Goddess of Beauty

In the last entry, I’ve mentioned we would be talking out about overcoming obstacles today. Well, turns out we won’t after all, because we figured it would be best if we introduced Aphrodite first, since she holds such a big part in the myth.

So, Aphrodite is the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure.

There are a few stories focusing on her birth, but here’s the most interesting, so here you go: Cronus was the leader of the first generation of Titans; he overthrew his father, Uranus, by castrating him (our mythology can be so charming sometimes :-p ). He threw Uranus’s genitals into the ocean and a divine creature arose from the sea foam; that was Aphrodite (according to some, her name means “foam-risen”).

When Eirini first showed me this sketch, my jaw dropped to the floor; but then again, that's the case with most of her sketches. :-p 

Simply put, she’s gorgeous; long blonde hair, slender figure and fine features. Because of her immense beauty, Zeus feared the rivalry that would break out between the gods in their attempt to woe and possess her, so he married her to Hephaestus, the god of smithing, in order to indicate she was off limits.

Sadly though, Hephaestus was far from charming, since he was ugly and deformed, so Aphrodite was known to have many lovers, both gods and men. In most cases, Hephaestus turned a blind eye to her unfaithfulness, because he didn’t want to lose her.

There was a point he did do something though; when he caught her in bed with Ares (some consider his to be the father of Eros too), but that’s a story for later on! ;-)

Character wise, in most myths, Aphrodite is mild tempered and kind to people, as long as they keep worshipping her of course.

In this particular myth though, she’s the exact opposite of that and it’s actually one of the things we liked about this myth.

She’s vain, vindictive, temperamental, and, at certain points, hysterical too; poor Psyche!

Here she's again; the goddess of beauty and probably the most difficult mother-in-law one could ask for! :-p

And here’s your bonus inside fun fact too: the bits of the myth that feature Aphrodite are the least changed; we were quite spot on from quite early on!

The joy of editing

Once Eros and Psyche were sorted (physically speaking of course, because personality wise they were far from it), it was time to start writing.

The very first draft was finished relatively fast (it was some time around last Christmas probably) and, let’s be honest, it sucked. Of course, back then we used to think it was alright –as far as first drafts go. We were well aware it would most definitely change at some point (because first drafts are meant to change), but we had yet to realise what exactly wasn’t sitting well with us.

That was the case for quite some time, so let's fast forward to April ’13, because that's when we had an epiphany (hallelujah!) and realised what was wrong with it. 

Eirini was visiting Athens for a couple of days and we figured it would be best if she stayed over at my place, since that would allow us plenty of time to work on things.

Of course ‘work’ actually translated into us spending an entire weekend talking about all topics imaginable, with intervals of talking about our project too, but we had no idea it would turn out this way.

I think that was probably the first time we actually realised how in tune we really were. I highly doubt many people would be all excited and launch into editing at two in the morning, but we did so without even batting an eye; and, before you even consider asking, no, we were not drunk, far from it (if you must know, we were drinking tea, nursing sore throats from talking too much :p ).

As we were going over it, we realised what was off; while the text and the flow were fine, they weren’t what we were aiming for.  “That’s not us” was all it took and we ended up crossing out about half and making quite a few changes to the remaining half (please feel free to imagine two overly excited five-year-olds :p ). And we had a good laugh making fun of the first draft too (“What was I thinking when I wrote that?”), which always makes things better.

Editing can (and should) be quite cruel; so don’t grow too attached to your first draft, because you'll end up changing most of it. And if you’re working with other people, keep in mind that their opinion matters too; that’s what being part of a team is all about. :)

Lastly, please allow me to apologise for the lack of pictures in this post; Eirini has been spoiling us all with her wonderful art, and now it seems like something's missing! :p 

We'll be making up for it in the next post though, when we'll talk about overcoming obstacles!

The God of Love

Greetings everyone!

Like I've said in the last entry, we are trying to work on our pacing, so here you have it: a brand new entry!

We've already introduced Psyche; so now it’s time to talk about the other half of our lovely couple, so, without further ado, let’s talk about Eros!

As the offspring of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, Eros has to be ridiculously good-looking. He’s well-built, blue-eyed, and blond, since he’s a god and there has to be something ethereal about him; that, or my illustrator is fascinated by blond men. (sorry Eirini but I just couldn't resist! :-p)

Eros' progression; charming from day one! ;-)

All jokes aside, we used the most common depiction of Aphrodite (you've got that right, gorgeous, blonde and blue-eyed) and Eros inherited all those characteristics too; so really, it's all about genetics!

We’ll talk more about Aphrodite later on, but for now, you can check how Eirini pictured her here and see the family resemblance too! :-D

Picking Eros’ clothes was easy; we immediately agreed on the style and colour and then (because we are perfectionists and the results had had to be just right), we put the two of them together in one panel to see if the colours matched.  

Even the colours of their clothes had to match...how cute is that? :p

...and that's a wrap for today's entry!

Coming up next: the first draft, editing, and collaborators' bonding too! 

Everyone, meet Psyche!

Although it might be a bit late for that, Happy New Year!

We hope it’s a good one so far!

Clearly, we are terrible at blogging; only two entries in, and it’s been “ages” since we updated it! (we are working on our pacing though, promise!)

Now, onto the project, shall we? I know we’ve already explained who does what in it, but the truth is a bit different than that; we are still involved in each other’s work, meaning that if we don’t like something that the other has made, we say so and see how we change it so that we are both pleased with the end result.

Actually, we are so involved in each other’s work that, after working on this project for so long, we often catch ourselves using the plural form instead of the singular, so we sound like: “We wrote the x bit the other day” or “We are drawing Psyche at the moment”. Team work in all its’ glory! :p

As you may have realised already, our way of doing things is not exactly conventional, so this walk-through to our project is probably going to seem a bit crazy from time to time, but since you are here, we are going to assume you don’t mind (much).

The very first thing we discussed and decided upon was what Eros and Psyche were going to look like and what they were going to wear; and that was long before I had even written a single word.

Despite it being slightly weird (because looking back at it, there were a few things we should/could have done before that), it was actually quite helpful, because once we knew what they were going to look like, picturing them and placing them in a certain context was a lot more easier.

So, let’s talk about Psyche first; according to the myth, people admired her beauty and even compared her to Aphrodite, so it’s obvious that she must be very beautiful. There are many kinds of beautiful though, and, in the end, we opted for not making her drop-dead-gorgeous like Aphrodite; instead Psyche is the ‘sweet, innocent girl next door’ kind of beautiful.

Physically speaking, she’s typically Mediterranean (and that’s about the only thing typical about her!); brunette with hazel eyes and a slender build. You may also notice that Psyche has a set of rather defined eyebrows; that was intentional, aiming to give her a more original look. She is beautiful and thick eyebrows don’t change that.

Psyche's evolution (along with the evolution of Eirini's maddening skills :p ) 

As for her clothes, choosing the style was easy (don’t forget we have an archaeologist on the team); at least for me it was, because Eirini did all the research and drew it and I was like: "Oh yeah, I like it, let's keep it!" :D

Picking the colours proved to be tricky though; Psyche gave us a bit of trouble. Settling on pink was a surprise, since either of us is the girly girl type, but oh well; let’s just say that was the first surprise of many.

Eirini: "So, what do you think?"
Myrto: "Love it!" (naturally!)
Eirini: "What about the colours?"
Myrto: "Well, I like the second one, but..."
Eirini: "...but pink? I know, I was just thinking the exact same thing!"

That's all for now, but we are talking about the god of love himself next, so stay tuned for that!