Varekai the Wandering

Completion Date: 06-06-10
Time Taken: 4 hours
Medium(s):
+ 05 mechanical pencil (HB Graphite lead)
+ Prismacolor brush tip marker pen (Black)
+ Color and watermark added in Photoshop CS2
Music:
+ Cirque du Soleil - Varekai ~ The Flight of Icarus - [link]
+ Vocea - Varekai - Cirque du Soleil
+ Lullaby - Vitas

Comment:
I present to the world, Varekai~
My newest and probably most meaningful centaur that I've made. Named after the Cirque du Soleil show, Varekai, that touched my heart in a way beyond words. I first came to know of the show Varekai about a year ago through youtube. The video was shown to me by a friend and I basically, for lack of better words, lost it. It was so beautiful and just hit me the right way to bring me to tears. This was the particular video that first bought me into the world of Varekai - [link] .While I own the soundtrack now I have sadly not seen the full show, only the segments that are on youtube, but that doesn't make me love it any less. So yesterday I was listening to the music and also watch the act called The Flight of Icarus from the show. The song in particular is special to me and I started to mold a character from those feelings and emotions. What I ended up with was a fluffy, soft coated Turkish Angora centaur with sad eyes, expressive large ears, and a cozy scarf.

Varekai holds a lot of my own personality in him, parts of me that people don't get to know or see for whatever reason. The scarf in particular is one that people might not catch right away. I have a large scarf that I wear all winter long and part of spring even if its warm out. I've had the thing so long I don't even remember where I got it from, but I haven't seen another one like it, so I guess its a special scarf. But I digress. I would wear this scarf not just from the cold but because I would have days when I just didn't want to show my face. Its a lot to do with self-esteem and anxiety but sometimes I would just wear it because it made me feel happy. It made me feel safe with that giant scarf wrapped around my neck that smelled like incense and dryer sheets. This is me and that same old scarf posing for a self portrait picture in class - [link]

Its hard to see but the blues and greens transition and fade into each other, which is where Varekai's minty greenish hair came from, and for whatever reason it works well with him. His eyes are also a kind of gooseberry green from the actual scarf too with a bit of a yellowish ring around the pupil. But its way too small for it to be seen so I'll just have to draw a better, bigger picture of him at some other point. Underneath his scarf, Varekai wears a simple necklace made of brown chord with a Nazar pendant, same as me - [link] , 95% of the time I have this necklace on and it doesn't come off unless I'm sleeping or bathing. Varekai is that part of me that I feel is secret, the sadness and wanderlust, the quiet and solitary part. He's so much of me that I can't actually, comfortably talk about but feel okay enough to draw like this.

I've gone on about it long enough, so I'll stop and just let the viewers enjoy. Expect to see more of him in the near future~

^{Artwork, Varekai © 2010 P. Lolla (*souls-poison)
Textures from [link] and `hibbary
Japanse Kanji brush from [link]
Do not use without permission. Artwork and character copyright P. Lolla (*souls-poison); All rights reserved. Do not alter, copy, and/or redistribute under penalty of law.}