The Rhyne Maiden and the Swans

I finished a painting of one of my Rhyne Maidens.  The initial sketches, and explanations of what a Rhyne is were in this post: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/the-rhyne-maidens/ but in the end I kept the concept and created a completely new image. Rhynes, I discovered, have appallingly unforgiving perspective, and I was quite pleased with how this turned out, but the composition was very much driven by how to handle the perspective. So at some point I shall go back and re-visit one of my original concepts as well. Those who are familiar with the far more common Rhinemaidens, will of course appreciate that I also feel a trio of Rhyne Maidens would fitting in a painting at some point, too.

So, onto the painting: I am still blue! I like the blue, and again I will not be adding any more colour to it.

Rhyne Maiden and Swans – painting in gouache

Rhyne Maiden – detail

Rhyne Maiden – detail3

Sketch of Rhyne Maiden, Swans and unforgiving perspective

A couple of bits of working drawings. The tail was quite fun. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this, but I gridded it out in an attempt to get a convincingly stretched and compressed surface. In the end I simply covered the tail with circles, but they were placed over the grid, so that they fit around the tail rather nicely.

Gridded surface of the Rhyne Maiden’s tail

Rhyne Maiden – detail2