Hades Art Piece

I'm designing some artwork for my sister's new colorway of yarn, titled Hades. Buy her yarn at Little Red Bicycle on Etsy. The colorway will be deep blue, violet, and charcoal, with specks of red. My task is to create something using those colors and the Greek theme that she can print on her labels.

My initial idea was to do some representation of Hades the god. Hades isn't the most interesting guy to draw, however. He looks like a hippie whose sense of fun and freedom have been seriously bogged down by dead souls and three headed demon dogs.

What's more is that Hades' signature thing in Greek mythology is his helmet of invisibility. No luck right? Additionally, there are fairly memorable modern designs floating around right now. There is the Apocalypto/Bane boss from God of War III:

And everyone's favorite:

Hades from Disney's Hercules movie is popular enough that he's the subject of plenty of fan art (and fanfic). In a word, Hades the character is untouchable.

But reading Greek mythology reveals that "Hades" doesn't simply refer to the god, but also the place. Hades as a place seems like a promising avenue with which to do this piece. Hades is different from Christian hell in atmosphere, but similar in hierarchy. Rather than being full of fire, Hades is misty and gloomy (Wikipedia).

There is Tartarus, an abyss used for torment, the Asphodel Meadows (flower pictured below), which is like earth but worse, and Elysium, where heroes and the virtuous go to die.

Finally, there are five rivers: Archeron of woe, Coctus of lamentation, Phlegethon of fire, Lethe of oblivion, and Styx of hate.

Right now my inclination is to go with a more abstract theme. Hades is a place vague enough to be thought of in lines and colors, symbols and shades. There is at once a transitionary aspect of Hades, from Tartartus to Elsyium, and a stark divisionary aspect of Hades, in the five rivers.

I always sketch first, this is my initial sketch:

This idea focuses on the rivers, which I will color according to the colorway my sister is working with.

Because I am focusing so much on color, I brought the design process into Illustrator. I'm experimenting with this tool called the Color Scheme Designer to pick colors to play around with:

This is the palette I've made for the project. Let's see if this thing holds up.

I figure that since this is a simple concept that depends more on accurate spacing etc I will use Illustrator for the project. Here is my first go at it:

This concept remains true to my original idea, but it is obviously not enough. While the rivers look like pieces of yarn, this doesn't really say "hell" or have dark aspects the way that it should. I have added red accents with Illustrator brushes that both make the piece look darker and express the flowing of rivers. I have also used art brushes on the borders of each color to make them grittier.

It needs more, though, so I am going to move it to photoshop to give it some more detail.

Additionally, I ended up changing every single one of the colors I had used from the Color Scheme Designer. I suspect that the tool is not for people who do design but for people who just want a quick color scheme.

This is what I came up with. I created a pattern that looks something like flaking paint or wood and overlayed it as a screen on top of the existing art. I think it adds a necessary element.

As a final touch I have put the names of the rivers in Greek below each one and cleaned up my pattern a bit:

I am not entirely sure about the names below the rivers, but I think that adding the names in Greek puts the piece back into context of Greek mythology while also giving it a strangely museum-art vibe.