"Freyja"

VERY different from my usual.  It's late and I'm tired. Been up since 4:30 am and it's 11 pm.  Time for some sleep.

EDIT: Since I was too tired to write up anything about this awesome Norse goddess...  Freyja (Freya) is the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, creation, war, and destruction.  She is obviously beautiful and desirable and all that, but she also is the Queen of the Valkyries.  She possesses the Brisingamen, the golden necklace made by the dwarfs.  She is also said to be able to shape-shift into a falcon, and has a falcon feather cloak.  She drives a chariot/sled pulled by ... this part is the coolest ... two silver cats! (Though they remain nameless...) She also has a boar she flies on when she is not running with her cats (Oddly enough, the boar does have a name.).

Detail view of her "costume" -- I based the armor design around the falcon feather cloak with feather/wing motifs repeating on the helmet, breast plate, and arm guards.  As for her necklace, Brisingamen, I gave chunky amber to compliment the gold.  Amber is said to be Freyja's tears that fell into the sea when she was looking for her husband (It seems he is often gone for some reason...).  Gold is also said to be her tears that fell on rocks.

I have to say, though, that the cat chariot probably was the single most compelling reason I wanted to make this picture.  I submitted this work to EMG-zine (an online publication about fantasy and sci-fi art and artists) just in time last night for October's theme "Scandinavian Mythology".