Doodling in between

First things first: this is not really a post.

I drew a couple of sketches of Leto the other day (mother of Apollo and Artemis) and I thought I would share

Pregnant Leto in the island of Delos

Giving birth with the help of Rhea and Amphitrite

That's all for now!

Chocolate Factory

Hello! 

It has been a while since I lastly wrote anything in this blog so I thought it was about time that I did :-)

Taking a break from our mythological subject, I'd like to share with you our (Myrto's and mine) latest outing. Myrto visited Thessaloniki (my hometown) last weekend and as per usual we had a great time!

Even if Myrto visiting is an exciting fact on its’ own, the reason why she came was even more exciting.

Every year Thessaloniki holds the HELEXPO (which, obviously, is a part of the EXPO), so for this year one of the exhibitions was called "Chocolate Factory" and, as you might have guessed by now, its’ subject was, well, chocolate!

Part of the "Factory" is a photography exhibition which held a contest as to who the participants would be. Guess who got to participate in the exhibition?? Myrto!!

I believe you can tell why we were so excited about this! A big CONGRATULATIONS to Myrto and let's hope that many more occasions like this will follow ;-)

An outer view of the Chocolate Factory

Myrto, me and our friends Oli and Dimitris in front of the chocolate waterfall

Imagine this wonderful setup with the amazing smell of chocolate and biscuit!

And there is Myrto's picture!! (those in the picture are my glasses as a matter of fact)

Mythological Couples: Idas and Marpessa

Greetings everyone!

After quite some time, we're talking about mythological couples again. Marpessa and Idas have quite an interesting story, so let's get right into it! 

Marpessa was a very beautiful and noble girl, daughter of Evenus and Alcippe. Evenus did not want her married to anyone, so he devised a plan to get rid of all aspiring suitors: any man wishing to marry Marpessa would first have to defeat him in a chariot race; if they failed, they would be decapitated.

Evenus was sure of his success, because his horses were strong and fierce, given to him by his father, Ares.

Many men lost their lives in the chariot race; and many did not even dare to compete with Evenus. There was a man though, Idas, the prince of Messene, who though he could win the race; he owned a winged chariot, a gift to him by Poseidon himself, so he figured he stood a pretty good chance against Evenus.

He did win, so naturally he demanded to marry Marpessa, as Evenus had promised. Evenus refused, but Idas would have none of that. He kidnapped Marpessa and set off for his homeland. Evenus went after them, but when he realised he could not stop them, he drowned himself in a nearby river.

Idas and Marpessa eventually reached Messene. They spent the night in a nearby temple, but upon waking up the next morning, Idas realised that Marpessa had gone missing.

Here's Apollo fighting Idas for Marpessa. (more details can be found here)
Surprisingly enough there are very few depictions in art, and this was the only one properly referenced, so we're sharing.

It turned out that Apollo, who had also fallen in love with the beautiful maiden, had stolen her. Idas, completely enraged, ran after them, prepared to fight to death in order to get Marpessa back.

They fought for hours; Apollo might be a god, but Idas was an extremely skilled warrior too so none of them was yielding. Knowing that neither was going to win, Zeus decided to put an end to their battle. He stopped them and asked Marpessa to choose between the two; the choice would be hers alone.

Marpessa was confused. A god wanted her, so naturally she was flattered. Apollo was handsome and powerful and he could give her the world. But he also would never grow old, while she would. Sure, Apollo loved her now that she was young and beautiful; once she grew old and lost her beauty, someone else would catch his eye and he would lose interest in her and dismiss her.

On the other side, Idas might be mortal and not nearly as handsome as Apollo, but he had proved his love for her; he was so determined to marry her, he had even fought against a god for her sake! She had a better chance at a long-lasting and faithful relationship with him. .

Instantly, she knew what to do. She turned down Apollo and chose Idas as her husband. Surprisingly, Apollo, although defeated, made a promise to never seek revenge.

With nothing else standing in their way, Idas and Marpessa finally got married and lived happily ever after.

Until next time!

Acrocorinth

Hi all!

You know how it’s summer and people go on vacation and usually take a break from things, right?

That was our case too, for the most part. You see, both Eirini and I had plans for this summer (because everyone needs to rest at some point), but, the thing is, we didn’t really want to take a break from blogging, so we had planned a few entries ahead in order to still have something new to upload while on vacation.

So today’s entry was actually all planned out and sorted, until I decided to “hijack” the blog and do a spontaneous entry about my visit to Acrocorinth, the Acropolis of Ancient Corinth. On that note, Eirini, I am sorry (not really, because I know you'll enjoy it :-D) for uploading an entry without consulting with you first.

Acrocorinth is one of the most impressive of the Acropoleis of Greece, both because of its’ position and geomorphology, but also because of its’ history. It was continuously occupied from archaic times to the early 19th century. Because of that continuity, one can see remains from various time periods, which makes it really exciting. Not to mention that it has three sets of walls: the Archaic one, the Byzantine one and the Frankish one.

How’s that relevant to the project you ask? Well, I was reading a book about the lowlifes of the ancient world (yeah, I read things like that for fun!) and I read that at some point there was a temple dedicated to Aphrodite there.

Naturally, I did some more research and found out that that temple was one of Aphrodite’s most famous ones. There was a statue of her and one of a winged Eros too; of course I wanted to go. So I got my dad and my sister to join me and off we went!

Since Acrocorinth was continuously occupied, over the course of the years the temple changed uses; first it was turned into a church and then into a mosque and, sadly, today one can only see the foundations of the temple.

The remains of Aphrodite's temple...

...the highest point with the gorgeous view (it's said that on a very clear day one can see the Acropolis in Athens)...

...and the replica of the statue.

According to mythology, Helios owned Acrocorinth and the entire area surrounding it; his son, Aeëtes , inherited everything but Acrocorinth, which Helios offered to Aphrodite as a gift.

She much preferred Mount Olympus though, so she gifted Acrocorinth to Medea, Aeëtes’s daughter. Medea built a temple dedicated to Aphrodite to the highest point of Acrocorinth. It was nothing fancy, and didn’t have many visitors until they managed to get running water up that hill (there’s a very interesting myth about it, which you can read here), and it sort of became an “in” place.

Sacred prostitution was practiced here, which, simply put, meant that Aphrodite’s priestesses were paid to introduce men to the mysteries of love. Also, in antiquity, Corinthians prostitutes were famous. People travelled from all over the world and paid insane amounts of money for a single night of pleasure, so it makes perfect sense that Aphrodite was worshipped here.

Until next time!

Soul Talk

Hi all!

After almost eight months of blogging, we realised that we haven’t given Psyche the attention she deserves; we’ve talked about Eros and his common depiction in art, we even discussed his wings! For some strange reason we neglected Psyche, so today we are fixing that!

Now, in case you aren’t aware of it, in art sometimes Psyche is depicted having butterfly wings.

Love and Psyche (William Adolphe Bougerau - 1899)

Psyche (Friedrich Paul Thumann- 1893)

We were curious about it too, so we looked into it (of course!) and that was one of the turning points for our research.

In Greek, Psyche (=Ψυχή) means literally means “soul”; ancient Greeks used to call butterflies “souls” (“ψυχές”), because they believed that were the souls of the dead.

The metamorphosis of the insect to a butterfly symbolises the course of soul from its mortal state to immortality. That same symbolization is used quite often when interpreting the myth too.

Psyche (Guillaume Seignac - 1900)

Psyche (Guillaume Seignac)

Psyche, a mortal girl, overcomes death and gains immortality through Eros’s love. She starts off as naïve and childlike; she falls in love, but being unprepared for it, she makes mistakes and loses Eros’ love. So she is forced to grow and leave her old self behind, so she can make amends and claim that love again, which eventually makes her immortal. So, her old self has to die, so she can be “reborn” through divine love, pretty much like a soul (a butterfly!) that leaves the mortal state behind.

Psyche (Wilhelm Kray)

The Awakening of Psyche (Guillaume Seignac - 1904)

And here’s a little fun fact too; as I was re-reading the entry, checking for mistakes and such, this was going through my head: “Oh dear, we must be completely crazy wanting to adapt this myth!” :-p

Psyche (Nikolaos Gyzis - 1893)

But then I remembered that we are indeed a tiny bit crazy (just the right amount) and how much we enjoy a good challenge, so, all’s good! ;-)

Until next time!

The Writing Process

Hi all!

So, Eirini has already talked about how she goes about drawing a scene, so we figured it's about time I talked about how I go about writing, so here goes.

Let me start by saying that working on an adaptation is quite different than working on an original story. When you are working on an adaptation, you are working within a fixed frame and while you can alter things, it’s only up to a certain degree.

You already know where your story starts and where it ends and you know your heroes too, so you are already “limited” in a way, whereas in an original story, the possibilities are (theoretically) countless.

Having said that, allow me to further explain; I am only going to talk about writing for this project, because I wouldn't want to bore you to death talking about the Victorian Project we are also working on. :-p

So, the "easiest" for me to write are the stories for the "Mythological Couples" series, because it usually goes like this: I study the myth (if I don't know it already) and make a few keynotes about the characters first; and then I re-read it, trying to figure out the dynamics between the characters, because I strongly believe that if you've got them right, they will guide you through the story. 

And then of course I have to decide if I will be making a story based on the entire myth (like I did with Daphnis and Chloe) or I'll just focus on a particular part of their story (like I did with Perseus and Andromeda)

Naturally, I always keep in mind that there's an illustration that goes along with each of the stories, so they have to go nicely together. See, the "deal" Eirini and I have about these stories is this: whoever comes up with an idea about the couple first, we go with that.

For instance, when we did the story about Meleager and Atalanta, I had finished the story first and the illustration followed, but when we did Perseus and Andromeda, Eirini had done the illustration first and I built the story around that (of course that's not a new thing for us; I've written countless things based on one of Eirini's sketches, so no surprises there).

The same things, more or less, apply to the myth of Eros and Psyche as well, multiplied by a thousand, quite possibly two. :-p

What's different about that myth is the insane amount of research that goes with it: past adaptations, papers on the heroes' emotional growth and change, psychological analyses, symbolisation and meaning; you name it, we've read it! :-p

This myth is a very beautiful one; and at the same time so very difficult. When writing the adaptation, I always try my hardest to keep its' messages intact, and, at the same time, "own" the myth, so the way we perceive it is made pretty obvious too. And to top all that, I have to make sure that my personal writing style is not getting lost in there somewhere. Piece of cake, right? :-p

Honestly? No. But I am not complaining; just because it's not easy, that doen't mean it's not worth it.

Until next time!

A Girl's Guide to Fashion, Ancient Greece style!

Hi all!

I think we’ve already said so (and even if we haven’t, it’s easily deductable), but one of the things we enjoy most about working on this project is the insane amount of research we do; yeah, we’re nerds, and we love every minute of it! :-p

But it’s more than that; when it comes down to it, it’s all about delivering the best possible result we can, simple as that.

Sooo, a while back, when we were still trying to figure out hairstyles and clothes for Eros and Psyche, as a result of the aforementioned research, Eirini did some doodles of ancient greek hairstyles and clothes, all drawn after original drawings on ancient greek vases, and today we'll be showing you the girls' collection! :-p 

Of course you’ve might have already seen them online, since they are uploaded on her dA page here (along with loads of other awesome art - and no, I am not biased!)  for a while now, but anyway here goes: Hairstyles and Dresses, ancient Greece style!

Part one of hairstyles...

...part two...

...and of course the collection wouldn't be complete without a few dresses thrown in for good measure. 

And in case you’re wondering why we didn’t make an entry about those back in March when Eirini uploaded the dresses, we forgot…kinda? :-p

See you all next week!