Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The Ars Goetia

You might have noticed a stack of black and red paintings on my art desk a few posts back. They are part of a project I'm sinking my teeth into concerning the 72 demons of The Ars Goetia. I was originally going to do a smaller series of demons based on my own design, and in large part that is what the first twelve of these are. I've only had to make small adjustments to be able to fit the first twelve demons I painted into the Goetia text. I had a disturbing experience when I'd made up a list of the demons with descriptions and had marked out which of the first twelve fit into what particular demon. I found one demon (Bifronis) that was only described as "resembles a monster" so I picked out one of my paintings to use for it. Upon further research I noticed another description of this demon as having two heads, one facing left and one facing right. So I thought, well I can't use that painting now, but I looked at it and what do I see? Two faces, one facing left and one facing right. How fucking strange of a coincidence is that? That demon is the one from my December 12th post at The Skeleton Cave.

Anyway, here are 3 of the 72 demons. They are all going to be red acrylic paint on black painted backgrounds. The surface is thick double coats of black acrylic paint front and back on hand ripped cardstock paper with deckled edges that, when paint is applied, makes the edges look almost like torn flesh or as though a flame had been applied, fitting for the imagery. I'm going to sell them on my blog for a measily 20 bucks each or 15 each if at least 3 are purchased.

Vapula -

Dantalion -

Bune -


6 comments:

zeke said...

these look great, especially the middle one, I love how you've got the paint fading out here and there to make bits stand out.

Paleo said...

Beautiful, but these small paintings are good enough to work as invocations...you did trace a circle around your drawing table before painting those, right?

If you didn't, i wouldn't be surprised if those toys in your table start running demonanimated around, tipping your inkwell and twisting the bristles in your brushes.

Aeron said...

Now that's an awesome idea for a drawing, kind of like Escher's that has the dragon or insect things waltzing around?

And thanks, I keep bumping into this series of demons online and I broke down and had to try my hand at making my own. The surface of these has a great leathery skin like feel which really adds to the demonic nature of the paintings. That's basically how these started was I took a torn down sheet of cardstock paper and layered it in paint on the front and back to see how durable it would be when it dried. When I noticed the skin like feel I just had to do something evil with it

I'd love to do a small book of these and make a Necronomicon styled cover with a small sculpted monster head with teeth. Not sure how I could mass produce something like that though. I suppose the book would need to include the symbols and accompanying text.

Luke P. said...

They are almost sculptural, in a way. I forget the technical word for paint that sticks out off the surface..
Anyhow, these are great. I'd like to buy the top one.
Do you take Paypal?

Noah Berlatsky said...

This is a great idea for a project. The drawings are lovely.

CMVrl said...

These are real good.