Fantasy and folklore art inspired by the African diaspora in the Americas

Click below to view Illustrations, fine art, and decorative figurines created by artists from Jamaica, Europe and the United States:

Therru's Star

Fanart for Ursula Le Guin's "Tehanu". The titular character Tehanu (aka Therru) lived on the island of Gont.

Available as prints, iPhone/iPad cases and other products on RedBubble.com.

For painting the "shelf of reddish sandstone" north of the village of Re Albi, I looked at numerous references of sandstone formations in the United States. Some of these sandstone cliffs were from Navajo Land. Coincidentally or not, the Navajo were one of my inspirations for envisioning Gontish clothing styles.

Other real world cultural influences on my design of Gontish attire: Tibetan, Uzbek, Kazakh.

Reasons for looking to these particular cultures:

• Presence of a sheep herding/goat-herding economy, which is practiced on Gont.
• Use of clothing elements mentioned in the Earthsea Cycle's description of Gontish people, such as jerkins, aprons and ruffles. (Not necessarily common or native to each of the societies mentioned, but between all of them, there is the use of such items, or something pretty close, in traditional clothing.)

Rock-cut architecture in Africa and Asia

Rock-hewn monuments from North African, East African, West Asian and South Asian civilizations:

Abu Simbel Temple (photo by Than217)

Bet Medhane Alem church (photo by Julien_Demade)

Mada'in Saleh" (photo by SammySix)

Cave 21 at Ellora (photo by Nandanupadhyay)

Detail of Naqsh-e Rustam (photo by Pastaitaken)

Click on thumbnails to view images on wikipedia.

Fantasy and mythology art inspired by the Middle East

Click image below to view Art from animation, book illustrations and graphic novels, produced by artists from diverse locales, including Turkey, Iran, Europe and North America:

Barking at a Dragon

Detail from Dragons of the Oil Sea.

Research sources used for the dragon:

• Ahmed Al Rawi's "The Religious connotation of the Islamic dragon":

  ..the dragon is usually perceived as having two different forms: ... a huge snake and/or (lind)worm, while in the traditions of the Mediterranean area and of Asia Minor it is a combination of a crocodile and a predatory bird. This corresponds to the other popular descriptions of the dragon in Arabic sources...

• Artistic representations from 14th century Syria and 15th century Afghanistan.

Part 2 of How NOT to Get a Wife: Stealing Skins

Myths of very different cultures contain the theme of the human male acquiring a wife of non-human origin by stealing her property and then withholding information from her. Three folktales from Chad, Sweden and Scotland all share these elements:

• An human man.
• A wild animal who becomes a woman after shedding her skin.
• The man steals the skin of the animal-woman.
• Unable to return to her animal form, she stays and becomes the man's wife.
• The animal-wife eventually finds the stolen skin and leaves the marriage.

Sisters

Detail from Dragons of the Oil Sea.

Stylistic inspirations:

• 8th century palm mosaic from Umayyad Mosque in Syria.
• 13th century paintings from Iraw
• 15th century paintings from Azerbaijan