First pass (end of first day) Her skin had a blue undertone- wish I had taken a pic of it then, since it looked cool. Tweaked composition to match square wood panel, and am adding in an egyptian styled background:
Second pass (end of second day): Still figuring out what to do with the border space (black? spray gold? papyrus paper?).
This one's headdress is more modeled after Liz Taylor's headpiece from the Cleopatra movie than anything I found that was authentic, but man, isn't it awesome looking?
The scarab beetle was associated with Ra the sun god; they saw Ra rolling the sun across the sky like a dung beetle (scarab) rolls a ball of poo.
Also, small stone sculptures of scarabs were placed over the heart of mummies; they were weighed against the feather of life when the deceased was being judged in the afterlife.
While I was drawing this, I thought to myself how much I freakin' love this sketchbook from Florence. I mean, seriously, the paper has -such- a beautiful texture and tooth to it, and I love how I can work the markers into it. Anyway. It will be sad!
I had some cool colors in mind for this one (like hieroglyphics), but I accidently fell asleep before I was able to get my markers out to color it in, so I think that's my body's way of telling me "go to sleep early tonight!" Ha ha! Maybe it'd be a cool painting to do one day?