Some time ago, my partner came up with the lovely idea of using my illustrations toward re-imagining the devotional candle. Y’know, the 8-inch tall candles you can get at your local Freddy’s, usually with images of Jesus or Mary. Alternately, Our Lady of Guadalupe can be found on occasion.

It got me thinking about how many other deities and pop-cultural representations of archetypes could be represented upon the simple framework of a candle. There are many Egyptian gods I wouldn’t mind having around the house, numerous Greek ones as well. So, to test the waters of  personal acceptability, I got to work on a favorite childhood character from the Hayao Miyazaki film Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke).

Mononoke having turned out rather well, I began work on my favorite of the Greek pantheon, Eris. I’ve always stylized Eris with personal flavor, as Eris was not one to adorn horns, though I always felt she deserved them.

While numerous more mythological devotional candle illustrations are in the works, and may even be available for purchase at some point, I’ll likely reveal them in batches as time goes on. 6 or 8 at a time seems a good number, to capture the essence of a given pantheon, as I see them.