Inspired and self-employed, the Howlet Design Comp re-ignited some schoolboy hype for me this April.
With the Design Comp in full flare this month, it really inspired me to get back behind the ink and start rolling around in mud with some bizarre design concepts that never got the call up.
So I have spent the last few weeks dicking around with some design ideas that have been tucked behind some dark corners of my dome. I don't know what agitated them back to the surface... And to be honest, I don't want to know.
Let me introduce you to a new piece releasing next month.
There is a sweet irony that I keep coming back to the Ouroboros concept.
If the irony isn’t glaring enough, let me explain... Its strange because the idea of 'looping' and the cycling of life is deeply imbued in the concept of 'Ouroboros'. And here I am, finding myself back at one of the first pieces I ever designed; The Ouroboros.
I am revisiting the ouroboros, in what I am now framing as a perfect touch of symbolic meaning.
The aspect that I find most intriguing about the ouroboros is the acceptance of this specific interpretation as an adequate representation of time and the ‘circle of life’, when it is quite an abstract visual. The vast cultural differences between all of those who have depicted an ouroboros, suggests that alignment on any concept should be difficult. Yet he we are, finding a bizarre unison in this one core belief and illustrated time and time again, in utter ends of the earth, in such similarity. Geez.
It is genuinely wild how often and in the most unlikely places, the ouroboros has inserted itself throughout history. From the Cosmos to the defense positions of lizards… And now I am introducing the ‘inceptual’ (good chance that is a made-up word) - idea of ouroboros. Meaning, ouroboros within ouroboros. Further explanation; I keep cycling back to the idea of the ouroboros, which in itself means exactly this.
Got a nose bleed yet? Yeah… same.
Look, I haven’t properly followed the rodent down his canal, so there likely is a very cohesive rationale for why this philosophy has such a sticky visual identity. But, I’m busy sketching… and letting these thoughts run ramped is fun. So, allow it.
My angle on this design is to incorporate Egyptian mythology. I want the dragon to play a dominant role in the ring.
Instead of further meandering around an article, let’s plug in one of the last ‘copy n pastes’ in this modern era before ChatGPT re-writes the internet…
“The oldest-known ouroboros appeared on a golden shrine in the tomb of Tutankhamen – ‘King Tut’ – in Egypt in the 13th Century BC, after a brief lull in traditional religion brought about by his predecessor, Akhenaten. According to leading Egyptologist Jan Assmann, the symbol “refers to the mystery of cyclical time, which flows back into itself”. The ancient Egyptians understood time as a series of repetitive cycles, instead of something linear and constantly evolving; and central to this idea was the flooding of the Nile and the journey of the sun.
…As such, the ouroboros in its original Egyptian context symbolised repetition, renewal, and the eternal cycle of time.”
I’ll leave you there.
May 1st.
