i-Friday ~ ancient ~

'Fortuna favet fatuis'

Well yes, I know that *technically speaking* it's Sunday rather than Friday but I've been busy with house guests and visiting friends ... peeters out.
So anyhoo - I didn't have a clue what to do for this weeks topic of 'ancient' for illustration friday so I typed 'ancient York' into google and had a dig around t'internet. Boy was it an education ... if you'd asked me what order the Anglo-Saxons, Romans and Vikings invaded York I would have got it completely wrong but thanks to the work of some better informed folks (here) I discovered that the Romans were here first. So I settled on *something Roman* as my subject and kept excavating the web until I came across some stuff about the Roman goddess Fortuna who had an altar built in York in her honour. A quick search in google images for 'Fortuna' unearthed this picture of the lady herself and I was sorted for what to draw. Fortuna (meaning 'she who turns the year turn about') was the goddess of fate who ruled oracles, fate, chance and was the protectress of women who had married only once. She symbolizes the capriciousness of life and luck and kept all men at her feet, the prosperous through fear and the unfortunate through hope. St. Augustine questionned why Fortuna was made a goddess 'since she is so blind that she runs to anybody without distinction, and often passes by her admirers to cling to those who despise her'. For everything you could possibly want to know about Fortuna and fortune in general you should go here.
I decided to make her a bit more ethereal so I gave her gold hair and that makes her my second gold haired bewinged creature but I guess all recovering creatives go through that stage ... don't they? ... right? I got very brave and used *actual paint* on this one rather than relying totally on my watercolour pencils then I embellished it with some jewels and pearls courtesy of the jewellery section of our Argos catalogue :-)
I was completely bewitched by the illustration friday submission from 'Kim's Suitcase' and even started making notes for a story inspired by the characters in her picture ... so inspirational!