The term valkyrie is pretty well understood in contemporary culture, by those who associate a certain affection with Norse mythology. The role of the Valkyrie was to guide the souls of defeated warriors to the halls of the Nordic afterlife, Valhalla.
They chose the slain from the battlefield, and were described female figures.
Essentially, the Valkyrie is described and often depicted as a beautiful, angelic woman who descends upon the battlefield and takes away the slain to ensure they attend great feasts and are provided with ample ale.
The wikipedia page on Valkyries in Norese mythology brings my attention to the following:
In the poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, the hero Helgi Hundingsbane sits in the corpse-strewn battlefield of Logafjöll. A light shines from the fell, and from that light strike bolts of lightning. Flying through the sky, helmeted valkyries appear. Their waist-length mail armour is drenched in blood; their spears shine brightly:
Then light shone from Logafell,
and from that radiance there came bolts of lightning;
wearing helmets at Himingvani [came the valkyries].
Their byrnies were drenched in blood;
and rays shone from their spears.
Now that's an image. That is certainly a starting point. I'm going to pop on Therion's "Secret of Runes", which is a concept album exploring the various worlds of Nordic Myth, (and an amazing album) - and get to work trying some general prompts about Valkyries to see what I get.
I want the painting and illustration style to be somewhat like the pre-raphaelite school of painters for this one, so that is the style of prompting I will use. I'm thinking Millais, Waterhouse, and John Collier.
Here's an initial output simply based on the word "Valkyries" and the stylistic request of "painted by millais, waterhouse, and collier".
Time to get a little bit more precise in my prompt
valkyries descending from the sky onto a bloody battlefield
Then time to get simpler:
valkyries descending from the sky
Then more complicated again
valkyries descending from the sky surrounded by lightning storm clouds dramatic lightning dark moody by john everett millais and dante gabriel rossetti and john collier and john william waterhouse, pre-raphaelite, detailed, trending on artstation, hd, masterpiece ultradetailed
This is a new front end for Stable Diffusion that I've been experimenting with, called AI Images. It is build in Unity, and continuously generates images based on your prompts, until you tell it to stop.
You can even add words live, and see how words change the output. It gets me a rough idea for what I am going to do, and how I am going to do it, based on the prompts, and a little bit of help from lexica.art to nail down the style and poses.
I get the feeling this one is going to be a lot of fun, and at the same time, I feel like it is going to be very frustrating, as I will be dealing with an entire tableau of characters instead of a single one. I'll need to do some research into paintings or painters who specialised in large paintings of war or combat.
Surely there's a lot of French or even American neo-classical painters who are capable of providing me with that inspiration. I'll see what I can come up with and will return again tomorrow with some further work on this topic.
Looking forward to exploring it further! Much further!
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