Dionysus and Ampelus: An Exercise in Environments

Just over a month ago, I did a picture of my Dionysus character called Night Terrors. Dio does not have a happy history, being the god of madness (among other things). So when this image popped into my head while listening to some Linkin Park, I decided to go with it. Then, of course, I felt kinda bad for Dio, so I decided to make it up to him by drawing him during a happy time in his life, which resulted in this sketch:

Ampelus was a handsome young satyr boy/shepherd Dio fell in love with when he very young - his first love, in fact. The first time I read about him, the author had just said he was a shepherd boy, without mentioning the whole satyr part, so I'd tried to draw him as a human several times.

Yeah, that didn't work.

Then, as I was researching deeper into Dio last month, I discovered that there were a few more sources on Ampelus than when I originally looked into him yeeeears ago. Lo and behold, all of them said he was a handsome young satyr. Cue the lightbulb clicking on. However, my usual satyr didn't really fit him, either. So, I decided to go more the sileni route, giving him human legs with the ears and tails of a donkey - and, of course, the horns, since it's just not a satyr without a pair of horns.

Ampelus was all set and Dio looked happy; all I needed to do was figure out the background. I decided to try to make it look like a scene and not just a character portrait. I wanted them to be part of the environment, and not have it just be a backdrop. To accomplish this (or try to, anyway), I opted for a landscape, with the canvas wider than it was tall, and set about filling that in.

My version of Dio met Ampelus near Mt. Nysa, where Dio hid in goat-form among the nymphs from his stepmother, Hera. It needed to have the feeling of a secret place where lovers might meet, a tucked-away place where they could be alone, yet still beautiful and light and airy with a feeling of innocent love rather than deep passion. To me, that meant water: a pond or small lake with waterfalls. Add lots of flowers and make it late on a hazy day with the sunlight diffused, and that got the feeling I was going for.

However, I really wanted this place to feel alive. The flowers helped accomplish that, but it needed just a little more. It needed wildlife. In the classic texts, no one quite agreed where, exactly, Mt. Nysa was, other than somewhere in or around the Mediterranean, so I started researching what kinds of wildlife the islands in the Aegean had. I didn't want anything that would draw attention away from the happy couple, so I looked into reptiles and amphibians first. A frog and a turtle with a rather interesting shell pattern caught my eye, so I put them in.

After that, I needed some birds. The Grey Heron fit the bill, and wouldn't draw too much attention to itself as it stalked among the water lilies. As with the rest of the background, I tried for a more painterly look, with brushstrokes suggesting the details rather than drawing in every single leaf, petal, and feather. It's something I've been working on in my backgrounds for about a year now, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.

Check out the final product over in my devArt gallery.