Apollon, God of Sun

I painted this piece as commission, with full artistic freedom, which has been a dream to work on from first brushstroke to finish!

Seing as the blending of greek mythology with heavy sci-fi design is defining the sculpt, I decided to hone in on those features and embrace the space/galaxy theme in the paintjob. Having gotten more and more into enjoying stippling as a brush technique in my other pieces around that time, I decided to stipple every little star by hand and likewise freehanding the more characteristic parts of the space freehand. On the hunt for references I was shown a brilliant online community platform for astrophotographers, who share their photography with each other, including a greath wealth of info about the celestial bodies/phenomena depicted and more (app.astrobin.com). A true treasure trove for references of this kind. In the end I used those freehands, done with stipples and color glazes across the bodies of both horses, the chariots wheels and Apollons cloak.

The only part I didn't freehand the starscape on, was the plinth. For a large surface like that (and with the limited remaining time I had before SMC) I ended up using a stiff brush and airbrush needle to flick thinned white paint with some precision onto the plinth, which I 3D sculpted myself and had printed by miniprinten.nl.

It's been a real passion project and I'm looking forward to it reaching the recipient in the US, although the shipping process will give me nightmares until the day it arrives.