Next up, we have Morgase, by the Grace of the Light, Queen of Andor, Defender of the Realm, Protector of the People, High Seat of House Trakand! Mother to Elayne and Gawyn, and step-mother to Galad!
This one was SO FRUSTRATING. It’s done now because I’m sick of it and wanted to move on to someone else. As much as I love Morgase as a character, I really struggled with painting her, mostly because of the dress. I always take my cues from what’s contained in the books, but you only ever get elements of a dress style and just have to imagine the rest. I really really hope I don’t spot things I want to change tomorrow – I always tend to post when I’ve been up all night finishing one of these and sometimes miss things because I am a zombie.
So, I’ll do my usual “artistic choices” breakdown below the cut! Spoiler free!
My Wheel of Time fanart series so far:
WHEEL OF TIME PORTRAIT COLLECTION:
Galad - Clean - Dirty
Rand - Clean - Dirty
Berelain - Clean
Morgase - You are here
MY ARTISTIC CHOICES (canon corrections welcome)
In The Eye of The World, Morgase is described as wearing a red and white pleated dress. That wasn’t a lot to go on, so I drew on the fact that Andor is an England equivalent, and looked at medieval gown designs. I also think that maybe Morgase has parallels to Elizabeth I, so I looked at Elizabethan period dresses.
This style is heavily imagined and based on portraits of Queen Elizabeth I from the 1500’s. The lace ruff is definitely Elizabethan and not actually described in the books – TV Morgase has a version of this kind of apparel, but I just wanted to do one in this image for fun. I love how it looks. To make it, I made one “pizza slice” and just copy/pasted it, moving it into position to create the whole frill. Sharp eyes will also catch the English roses in this image.
The skirt is where I tried to make it look like red and white pleats, but I’m not sure the effect gives that impression. The sleeves are “slashed” since Jordan is always describing slashed sleeves and dresses. I thought, why wouldn’t Morgase wear that style? So she has slashed sleeves.
All of the other dress patterns and lace are pattern overlays.
The jewelry is mostly made up, based on a bunch of jewelry I saw googling for “crown jewels” and “royal jewelry”, and the crown is my interpretation of the Rose crown of Andor, described in the books as “a wreath of highly-wrought golden roses”. To make it, I drew one rose and just copy/pasted it before painting over it to create shadows and highlights. I've used rubies and diamonds - red and white for Andor.
I won’t give you a close up of the crown because it’s a bloody mess (I rushed it and just wanted it to be done, so I didn’t bother making it nice), but here’s one of the jewels. I drew a round and square diamond each and just copy/pasted it. For the ruby, I put down the basic colours and then just cheated by using Photoshop’s crystallize pixellate filter. I also got really lazy with the goldwork here – used some layer blending options like stroke and inner shadow because I just couldn’t be bothered.
You can also see the pattern overlays up close and how I didn’t bother masking them so they didn’t mingle. That’s the benefit of painting on a huge canvas – when you downsize it for use on the web, many many flaws are hidden! :)
One thing I haven’t shown in this image is a stole which Morgase has been described as wearing. I’m not sure it has an official name, but I’ll call it the “lion stole”. In the books it’s a red stole with the white lions of Andor marching along it. The lion stole will appear in my alternate version of Morgase.
As for the way I’ve painted Morgase, I saw online somewhere that Robert Jordan’s casting for her was Michelle Pfeiffer, so I kind of made her look a bit like Pfieffer. Kinda. I can’t recall, but I think Morgase is described as having red gold curls of hair. I haven’t really given her visible curls, but the colour is right. She can always straighten her hair hah! I've also tried to make her look a bit "ageless" since she's described as younger than she looks (She's 43 iirc?).
IIRC, Morgase is described as wearing red lipstick, so my version has red lips.
I really couldn't be bothered spending much time on the hands since by the time I got to them, I was already feeling a bit burnt out. So not a lot of work went into them and it shows.
So that’s my Morgase! I don’t know who I’m going to do next. Ususally I decide before finishing a portrait so I’ve got something to move on to right away, but this portrait took up way too much time and brain power so I just focused on getting it done. I know it’s time to “finish” an image when I’m not looking forward to working on it anymore. It really was the dress that stressed me out, same as with Berelain. It only just occurred to me that you essentially have to design a dress in order to paint it if you’re not painting from a reference. That’s just too much for my brain right now!!
I’ll figure out who to work on next! Hopefully someone less stressful, and I also have some "alternative" versions of my existing portraits to post (more on that later).
Can I just say how utterly refreshing it was to see Morgase be not only disgusted but also baffled at the concept of owning people?
It really struck me when the Seanchan mention it to her and yes, she finds it repugnant, but she's also never heard of or even imagined the idea of slavery. I don't care if it's realistic or not, it was just so nice to realize that people as property is a foreign concept in Randland.
