Day 5 - Bluebeard and His Last Wife

I have always been morbidly fascinated by Bluebeard because of all the bloody bits, but I don't think anyone wants to hang a painting of bloody bits, so I went for a futuristic hipster wedding portrait thing, because fun.

That is all.

Day 4 - The Heroine Preparing to Save Herself

So here's something I didn't know: In the Aarne–Thompson system of classifying folktales, there is a type called "The heroine rescues herself and her sisters."  Get the hell out, right?  I WOULD NOT JOKE ABOUT IT.  It's a type of tale (type 311, in fact), although of course, it's not a type that anyone ever bothered to relate to me when I was a child, because I was raised under a leaky bridge by sexist trolls.

I'm kidding.  It was more of a leaky overpass.

Okay, in any case, I stumbled across "How the Devil Married Three Sisters"while reading up on "Bluebeard."  Both tales feature an evil husband, a forbidden room, and a multiplicity of curious brides.  Where Bluebeard has a room full of bloody corpses, however, the Devil has the doorway to hell.  In his house.  To each his sulfurous own.

Both tales also feature a telltale sign that the wife has been overly curious.  In "Bluebeard," the wife, shocked at the sight of her husband's former wives hanging from hooks on the walls, drops the key to the room in the blood on the floor, after which, the key will not come clean.  In "How the Devil Married Three Sisters," the oldest and middle sisters are still wearing their wedding corsages when they open the door.  The flowers wilt in the heat of Hell - as flowers will - and then the Devil, realizing what they have done, casts them down into the fiery pit. Bummer.

It's hard getting married to a guy when you suspect he's murdered both of your older sisters, but that's what our heroine does, because the devil has money, and her parents like the match.  (Sigh.)  After the wedding, our clever heroine receives the same prohibition about opening the door, and she experiences the same need to open it anyway.  But.  Before opening the door to Hell, she removes her corsage and places it in water.  As she stares into Hell itself, she sees her sisters languishing there, pulls them back out again, and after some celebrating (I presume), she goes back to the Devil with her corsage still "fresh."  Seeing that she has obeyed him, the Devil becomes utterly smitten.

Now, call me crazy, but when you go to your new husband, and he is overcome with love and lust upon seeing that your "flowers" are "still fresh," I see a giant virginity thing happening.  The two older sisters might have been untouched by man on the night of their wedding, but their curiosity - their need to know more than their husband permitted - was tantamount to sexual unchastity. SO INTERESTING, yes?  Yes, indeed.

ANYWAY, from this tale, I chose the moment when the third sister goes back to the devil with her "fresh flowers" and looks into his eyes, innocently, as if nothing has happened.  It's a critical performance, because she can't very well say, "Hey, you cast my sisters into hell, but I just pulled them out again, and tomorrow, I'm going to trick you into taking us all back home, so fuck you very much."  She has to get through this night so that she can save the day tomorrow.

Here she is, looking up at the Devil, plotting her escape.

Day 3 - Snow White, Her Heart Pounding

This canvas began with a mistake.  To create one of the "frames" on my Day 2 canvas, I mixed up a pile of a dark and dirty olive green - or rather, I tried to achieve a dark olive green, but ended up with something much closer to brown.  En route to the olive color I could see so clearly in my mind, I added more green, and then more, followed by still more, until suddenly, my pile of paint was bigger than my fist.  Oops.  Rather than waste it, I decided to coat this canvas, but it looked so dark that I temporarily slipped into a funk.  (This happens sometimes when you're painting 30 Paintings in 30 Days: You're tired, and small pebbles can seem like Sisyphean boulders.)  Once I decided to make a dark and threatening forest, however, the canvas came immediately into focus.  Phew.

Here is Snow White, Her Heart Pounding:

In person, it's almost magical, and I fear I can't capture that in pictures.  

Day 2 - Sorrow

Yesterday, I told you the early part of the story about Biancabella.  Today, I must relate the rest.  When she came of age, Biancabella was betrothed to a prince.  Now, this prince's stepmother (need I specify that she is wicked?) had intended for the prince to marry one of her daughters (need I specify that they are ugly?).  The stepmother waited until the prince was called away to war, then ordered her servants to take Biancabella away and return with proof of having killed her.  The servants, in an act of "mercy" (?), removed Biancabella's eyes and hands.  Biancabella lived this way for many years until she grew so sad and desperate that she thought of taking her own life.  At this point, her magical snake sister-mother-father reappeared, gave her back her eyes and hands, and took her back to the castle.  The stepmother was thrown into a fiery furnace, and Biancabella lived happily ever after with a therapist on call 24 hours a day.  Okay, I added the part about the therapist.  But seriously.  Would she not need some intense therapy?!

I called yesterday's canvas, "Biancabella, Flowers Growing Out of Her Hands."  Today, I present "Biancabella, Her Eyes Stolen," which I then renamed "Sorrow."

I am so interested in the way that we frame acts of incredible violence and horror in fairy tales that I decided to literalize that with multiple "frames" around Biancabella.  She is our point of focus, but we feel distant from her because we cannot meet her eyes or know her mind.

It is available in my shop.

Day 1 - Biancabella

Last year, when I completed this challenge, I had a theme, and I'll be honest: I found that damn helpful.  As I joked to someone yesterday, without a theme, it's hard to have a brilliant idea every day in a row for 30 days!  This year, my theme is "Women in Fairy Tales and Myths," because I love to paint women, and I love the bizarre, bloody, murderous, awful, surreal, and terrifying tales that different cultures pass down through the generations.  Humanity knows how to keep it real.

To kick things off, I chose an Italian fairy tale called "Biancabella and the Snake," because it is freaky interesting.

• Biancabella's father takes a wife because he is growing very concerned that he has no heirs. His wife, however, does not conceive a child by him.  Instead, she conceives when a tiny female garden snake slithers up her dress and into her womb during a casual outdoor nap.  It's a phallic symbol.  It's a female.  It's FASCINATING. 
• Biancabella is born with the snake wrapped around her throat three times.
• Later, the snake calls Biancabella to the garden, identifies itself as her sister, and asks her to bathe in milk and rosewater, after which, flowers grow from Biancabella's hands.  To me, this is a sort of secular baptism, followed by something like stigmata.  MORE FASCINATING.

I will probably stick with this fairy tale for at least one more painting, but until then, this is Biancabella in the garden after her milk bath, sprouting flowers from her hands.  I took only one work in progress shot.

It is available in my shop.

Drawlloween So Far

Here are my ATCs for Drawlloween, the Halloween drawing challenge that I may or may not finish.  (I'm racing to catch up because blah blah blah reasons.)

Prompt 1 - Ghost

Prompt 2 - Devil

Prompt 3 - Goblin

Prompt 4 - Vampire

Prompt 5 - Werewolf (I made him a Luchadora b/c it was the only way)

Prompt 6 - Haunted House

Prompt 7 - Pumpkin

Prompt 8 - Zombie

Prompt 9 - Eyeball

Prompt 10 - Alien

Prompt 11 - Raven (American raven dressing up as French raven)

Prompt 12 - The Moon (touching the mountain lake)

Prompt 13 - Frankenstein (diptych)

Prompt 14: Bat (he hangs upside down, but this is the best way to see him)

And . . . I'm just sticking this here because I need it somewhere.  Nice, I know.

Family Pictures

This is for a swap on Illustrated ATCs, where some artists will be drawing portraits of my family.

AnnD and husband, Jason

AnnD's brother, Alex, and son, Orie

Ann and Jason again

Ann and, you know, Jason

Ann and Orie

Ann and Orie

Jason, Ann, Jason's mother, Orie

Red hair

Jason as a cat

Orie's future college?

Orie after tennis

Orie and Jason's mother, Margaret