Urania, the muse

You may know Urania as a muse. The patron of astronomy according to ancient Greek mythology. And this was the way she was depicted as a miniature from Dark Sword Miniatures.

Painting her as a beautiful woman with astronomer’s instruments would be way too obvious and too easy, so with one general suggestion to “give the globe a baleful glow” I turned her into something like this:

Urania, the muse
Urania, the muse

She keeps her astronomer’s tools and star-covered surface of her dress reminds of the original concept but the glow of her globe reveals a totally different aspect of her nature…

Now here’s the original artwork. Don’t you think it would be too obvious to follow this direction? 😉

Urania, the original artwork
Urania, the original artwork