I was getting ready to start a completely different piece when I was listening to a podcast that inspired this one. One of the subjects of discussion was of black people who don’t try to learn about their ancestors. In the midst of said discussion, someone mentioned that most everyone in America can trace their family due to a family crest. And thus, I began to work on this piece of artwork. Years ago, I looked into my own family history and found possible ancestry in Manden Kurufa, or the Mali Empire. Most of who I found were farmers & ranchers, so, no royalty or anything of that nature. Anyways, with that, the first part I start on is the shield. It’s shape & designs are loosely based off of Mali colour/design patterns. The next part is the lion’s head. I had no basis for this, just saw so many other crests using animal heads and I decided to go with a lion. After that, I started on the spear. The blade isn’t one that exist (as far as I know). It’s just something I came up with. And then I did the wings. Again, I just looked at a lot of what others had done, and saw it used for their crests. And lastly, I put the ribbon at the base, again, just because. So, after all of those are finished, I follow the same process as always. Everything is put into photoshop and arranged as necessary. Merchandise http://euvari.deviantart.com/ http://www.imagekind.com/MemberProfile.aspx?MID=81b1100d-5141-4ff4-8e98-6d088c131b4e http://www.redbubble.com/people/euvari http://www.zazzle.com/euvari Videos http://artistinternetcafe.com/video/jikoba-legacy-crest http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xic15g_jikoba-legacy-crest_creation http://www.facebook.com/video/?encoding#!/video/video.php?v=209956889029455&comments http://www.gather.com/viewVideo.action?id=11821949021924039 http://lafango.com/euvari/media/1459772-jikoba-legacy-crest#!/media/1459772-jikoba-legacy-crest http://en.sevenload.com/videos/FhyPBuo-Jikoba-Legacy-Crest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XffxXIstNw