Raven has yet another art project going. I'm posting his call for submissions here. Feel free to send this around.
-Joshua
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Dear Pagan Artists:
I’m looking for more donated art for a book project, for those of you who’d like the credit and would like to be part of this. I’m in the process of a writing a book called “The Northern Tradition Herbal”, which is dedicated to the medicinal and magical uses of the herbs of northern Europe. It’s different from other herbals in that it focuses on the greenwights – the spirits or devas of each type of plant. I’ve done a great deal of talking to the plant spirits, and I describe the nature and (subjective) appearance of each one.
I would love to have illustrations for at least a few of these plant-spirits in the book. Since this is not a color book, I’m looking for black-and-white line drawings. Each drawing would have both an artist’s rendition of the plant-spirit (based on the description that I would give you) and a reasonably accurate rendition of the leaves/stem/flowers of the plant or tree associated with them (I’d find online photos for you to refer to). I’m looking for art that is witchy, folky, whimsical, chilling, mysterious, and gives the feel of each spirit.
If there’s a European herb or tree that is a favorite of yours, email me at cauldronfarm@hotmail.com and please let me know what it is, and I’ll send you the description to work with. Yes, you can do more than one. Here are a few examples:
Grandmother Mugwort is witchy, spooky, and incredibly powerful … feminine, ancient and mysterious. She is very lunar, but she is not the shining maiden new moon or the swollen full moon; she is the mysteries of the dark moon, the witchy crone with the wild mane of silver hair and the long, pointy fingers. Her voice is rough and cracking and she cackles. She opens her arms and silvery magic pours forth in a cloud, and she can fill a space like no other plant I know, even beating out juniper and American sage. She loves to work with psychic folk and lays very few rules; her attitude seems to be more one of, “Knock yourself out! If you get screwed up, it’s your own fault and you’ll learn, now won’t you?” After which she cackles at you further. To her, your safety is not her problem ... which can be good and bad.
Mother Blackthorn looks at you darkly under heavy-lidded eyelids, suspicious and untrusting. If she is in a generous mood, she may gift you with berries, but she always seems as if she’d like your blood, smeared on her bark from the prick of her thorns, as payment. She is tall and thin, with purple-black hair that falls in long ringlets, and long nails and teeth. When she sings, it is dangerously lulling. When she shrieks, it is all you can do to keep from fleeing in panic. She clutches a midnight mantle about her thin form, and gestures in a foreboding manner as she speaks. If she takes a liking to you and decides to help you with magic, be grateful … and don’t take her for granted. She will want regular offerings for her trouble.
Cuckoo-Bread is a tiny wood-sprite, giggling and hiding behind trees, bouncing about, so unformed as to be largely genderless. Cuckoo-Bread-wight isn’t very bright, but is extremely cheerful. If you can cope with the short attention span, Cuckoo-Bread-Wight can be asked to call out to you when you are traipsing through the woods, and intend to pass one of its plants on the way back (preferably one in a prominent place) and want to make sure you’re on the right path. On the other hand, you might not want to entrust such an important thing to such a scatterbrained wight. Another use for Cuckoo-Bread-Wight is to point out faeries; if you think that you are being followed or spied upon by fey folk, you can ask Cuckoo-Bread, who can not only see faery-folk, but will innocently and cheerfully point them out – “Why, of course, can’t you see that elf hiding behind that tree, silly?” Don’t worry about repercussions from faery to plant-wight; the fey folk are all aware of Cuckoo-Bread’s nature and will simply sigh, grind their teeth, and shrug it off.
Viper’s Bugloss is a hunter. He is tall and vigilant, and often appears as some sort of Jotun in animal skins and feathers and body paint. His head is held high and moves in short jerks, like a hunting bird or animal, constantly watching what is going on around him. His eyes miss nothing. He doesn’t talk much, and pays little attention to humans in general, but he is usually quite willing to go on a seek-and-destroy mission. He is skilled at the art of utter focus, and is a good ally and teacher for medical herbalists who need to track down a difficult diagnosis.
Grandfather Sage is so old and wizened that he was practically a thin stick hidden under a mountain of white hair and beard. He reminded me of one of those anchorites on the tops of mountains who has meditated for over a century, but when you ask him for advice, it’s terribly sensible and prosaic. When he moved, he was nimble and quick, fluid in his movements like a t’ai ch’i master. He is another of the “doctor plants” who can look at you and diagnose what’s wrong. He is less of a sorcerer and more of a holy hermit, however; his wisdoms are more abut the sacred and the cosmic, in spite of his practical advice, than of the occult or the wizardous. Grandfather Sage is choosy about who he will take for allies; he may turn down a spirit-worker in favor of a housewife with no apparent reason, and there seems to be no way to stack your chances. He squints at you, reads something in you, and decides, and that’s that.
Coltsfoot-wight always comes shaggy and with hooves, but always upright and on two legs. Sometimes he looks half shaggy mountain pony, sometimes as if he is half Highland cattle, sometimes half donkey. His face is an amalgam of humanoid and horse/cow/donkey. He does not speak in words, but can communicate in images and body language. If he likes you, he will puff and blow on you, or perhaps try to nuzzle you. It is important not to eat meat from cruelly-farmed hoofed livestock while using Coltsfoot medicinally – shell out for locally-grown organic meat whose treatment you can vouch for during that time.
Chickweed appears to me as a wild adolescent girl, the sort who grew up half-wild in poverty and knows more about running through the woods and fields than anything to do with manners and education. Her hair is disheveled, with a myriad of leaves and starry white flowers in is, sticking out at all angles; her dress is frayed and ill-fitting, her feet are caked with manure. She isn’t shy at all – more the type to seize the hand of a total stranger and enthusiastically pull him off into a field to look at some interesting mushroom she’s found on a dungheap, with no thought as to whether he might not find that just as fun and fascinating as she does. She isn’t the deepest of plant-wights, but for some reason she has a naïve innate knowledge of the skies, from laying out on hills all night when decent folk are in bed, and staring at the stars.
Master Catnip is bald, rotund, and complacent, and naps a lot. He prefers animals to people, and you can actually get on better with him if you come to him pretending to be an animal who needs his help. It’s not that he’s fooled, but your willingness to act like a cat or dog or horse amuses and entertains him, and makes him more likely to work with you. He speaks in a high, squeaky voice that is often difficult to make out, and there is something of the slightly demented child in him.
Those are just a few … I have 150 of them (I know that’s not nearly enough, but I had to stop somewhere or the book would have been a million pages long), but I’m not really all that invested in how many illustrations I get. The deadline for this project is December 1, and what I get by that time is what I get. If you know nothing about herbs and wouldn’t know where to start choosing one, that’s all right … just give me some adjectives of what sort of plant-spirit you might like to draw – tree or herb? Male, female, or something else entirely? Friendly or reserved? Spooky or cheerful? Serious or whimsical? If you really don’t care, I will send you a list of the ones I most want to see done and you can pick.
All illustrations should be sent to me as .jpgs of at least 300 dpi. They can be any size or shape. There's no pay in this, but all artists will be credited in the book by whatever name they prefer, plus have art websites listed. Thank you in advance!
-Raven Kaldera
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