Be careful when you doodle, who knows where you'll end up

I have some (not very good) tiger pics from our last visit to the zoo. Here's the progression from a simple doodle to...um...something entirely different:

So there I am doodling a tiger, challenging myself by turning the viewpoint about 30 degrees from my reference photo (a very good excercise to sharpen your spatial skills btw) slapping on paint, tweaking things here and there, when I found that Blake poem "The Tyger" stuck in my head as I'm working. See here if you don't know it by heart already [link]

So slowly my tyger gained a haze of fire around him.

So I'm painting, painting this tyger (burning bright) and listening to NPR, thinking of the middle east and the ancient art I love so much. Remember this [link] Gotta love a winged lion.

Anyway, there he sat with a pair of wings. The wings were SO much work, I spent about a week on the large pair while the tiger sat in rough sketch below. It gave me a lot of time to sit there thinking as I worked, wondering where this was leading.

At some point I found myself thinking how much this strange creature reminded me of the seraphim--Six winged fiery angels who bring justice. They are sometimes described by the ancients as serpents with six wings, but I still think this fits somwhat with the traditional view.

In the tree of life (Kabbalah) the concept of justice is paired with mercy, rather an elegent idea, I think. I'd like to make a companion piece to this eventually.

No. I'm not a religious person I just doodle too much

Edited again 25 July '02, cause I'm a dork who can't leave well enough alone lol I wanted to clean up the wings, define the fur a bit more and generally play around. I like this one too much to leave it alone