Amber - Brigid

An Irish Goddess, and one who is kept alive and real by the Celtic Irish.  Her name means 'Exalted One' and her ancient Gaelic name means 'fiery power' or 'fiery arrow'.  She is a Sun goddess who symbolizes fire.  It is said she was born in a ray of sunshine at the earliest dawning and birth of the Earth God and fertility. Some say she was born with a ray of sunshine rising from her head.  When she was born, she drank milk from the sacred spirit cow. Milk often kept the ancients alive during the cold misty times and milk is honored along with Brigid.

She is keeper of hearth fires, the healer of warmth, literature, music and had the ability to prophesize.  Things grew at her touch.  She unified and is known to help us with unity.  

Of course, when Christianity came, it was one goddess they had to change her meanings and representations quickly.  She was made to fit Catholic ideologies.  She became Saint Brigid of Kildare.  Yes, she could still be honored for her magic and the story of miracles and healings came to be told.  She, eventually, became synonymous of the Virgin Mary and even as the midwife to Mary when Jesus was born.  The changes in the 5th century allowed her to still be considered.  

Often you will see her represented with the Oak Tree and all its many connotations.  The Oak tree is the symbol of strength, resistance and knowledge, in fact, the Oak Tree is symbolic of wisdom in morale and that wisdom is gathered slowly as the tree grows and ages, like us.

I totally saw this page painting in my head.  I knew where I wanted to go, but I did not know where IT wanted to go.  I simply drew a facial shape and then choose every color close to amber that I could.  I forgot to put in that I also used Pure Pumpkin because the color is not supposed to be Gold..it was supposed to be Amber...so orange will give me that look.

I slowly added lighter and lighter tones until I got a basic face...now for glitz.
 

Once I got the background, I started adding shading and lights to the face.

Again, I had a messy look to it and so kept layering.  I used a brown watercolor felt pen to darken some areas.
  

Of course, I had to do an oak leaf, Brigid's tree leaf.  And I started glittering it all up.



And , of course, more and more glitter with some dragonfly glaze with gold illusions.  The glitter and glazing do not show up well with photographing, but she is more smooth than the photo shows.