This is the definitive, new and improved
version of this picture, and not the crappy sketch
that it was. It was suprisingly a lot of fun to clean up! I almost exclusively
used the pen tool in Photoshop to do the entire picture, lines and shading.
For those who know about the tool, I didn't just use the 'stroke path' feature,
what I did was create the whole shape of the line as an enclosed path, then
filled the path with a color. Doing this I could get very dynamic lines -
I was striving for an inked look like you'd see in a comic book. It honestly
didn't take that long to do either, maybe twelve hours total. This
picture has been used as a tattoo
by someone (the comment at bottom) as well as graphical
art for a RPG group (with my blessing.)
The concept behind my depiction of the Greek Goddess of Justice is that Justice
is blind, so how did she get that way? My interpretation was that
she is SO dedicated to the equal application of Justice for all that she took
her own eyes out rather than apply justice unfairly. Thus in my
picture she's offering up her own eyes as her sacrifice to equal justice for
humanity. In my conception of her as a character I imagine her
being something of a zealous nut, but she is checked and balanced, as it were,
by her mate the God of Mercy. I think later I'll do some pictures
of Justice weilding a sword...
A short history of the depictions of Justice throughout history and specifically
of the ones on the Supreme court building can be found
here. Justice was apparently NOT blind in the original classical
depictions, their interpretation of the Justice Goddess was quite different,
as quoted from the above file -
"During the 16th
century, artists increasingly showed Justice with a blindfold. The origin
of the blindfold is unclear, but there is some evidence that these early artists
added the blindfold to indicate the courts’ tolerance of, or ignorance
to, abuse of the law. Today the blindfold is generally accepted as a symbol
of impartiality, but may appear in political cartoons to signify these other
traits."