The march of progress

A comment on man's technobedazzlement of today and an obvious nod to Bosch's Haywain.

Love like blood

Romance in the air.

The Upside Down Island

A new character, a new development.

Sex in the jungle!

Ah shoot, we just missed it.
This is where yet another episode of my 'Islands' story starts. This is a kind of prequel (their oldest daughter is not born yet), entitled The Upside Down Island, which will explain the how and why of Kali's cannibalism. Some new characters will be introduced in an exchange of half-truths, somewhat inspired by Kurosawa's Rashomon.

Pseudocannibalism

Work in progress.

Centauroid 10

One angry centauroid you don't want to mess with.

GULA

Last weekend I was at the comics festival of Lucca in Italy. It was an exhilarating experience! Little did I know it's the third in size in the world. Despite the crowds it has a relaxed and homey atmosphere. The city itself is small and compact and ancient. I would say I prefer it to Angouleme.
Anyway, I had been invited as a part of a Dutch delegation of comic artists, including Sam Peeters, Jeroen Funke, Dace Sietina, Barbara Stok, Tim Enthoven, Milan Hulsing and Bart Nijstad. Our presentation involved some painting action. The theme was the seven deadly sins. I picked gluttony to use it as an excuse to do some more cannibals. Each of us did three paintings in three days (except Barbara who kept a diary in comic form).

I think this one came out the best, with the Romanesque swirls I like.

This autofagic guy is too clumsy to go hunting and it's not getting better.

The big ones eat the small ones. This one was the first I did. It probably shows my rustiness at the time. We were tired from travelling, plus I paint only now and then...
More photos of the festival were made, but they will pop up at some other spot if all works out.

Cannibal Conjurer

Testing a new lino cut... I flopped the art to see how the endresult should be here. The high part I marked with a uh, marker because I am without ink and a press at the moment. A scan will do for now. The composition was inspired by Bosch's Conjurer and the meaning of the term autopsy: "to see oneself". This is the finished piece, ready for print:

Drawing Straws

Working on some lino cuts for a special anthology, to be realised later this year (although it's not quite sure yet whether the money for it will be there - I am mentioning this so there will be less chance of jinxing it). Anyway, this is just one design of five. Here are some quick tests which I have done while cutting away details.

Hmm, not so happy with the structure on the ground but at least no letters are in mirror view. That would have been plain embarrassing. There is still a little bit of fixing after this, but not much. Everybody who has done this, knows that it's particularly hard to know when exactly to stop.

The theme of cannibalism still occupies my mind. It has been said that the theme of drawing straws among shipwrecked sailors is a strictly theoretical one, because one dies of thirst long before hunger becomes a lethal problem. I wouldn't know...

Hic Sunt Antropofagi

Currently working on a piece featuring cannibals. X-Mas is coming after all.
This is one of the preliminary sketches for it.

The fish are commenting on what's happening along the lines of a 16-century print after Hieronymus Bosch: 'Look son, this is something I have known for a long time. The big (fish) eat the small ones'. But I am not going to use that in the end, it's too obscure/referential. The drawing is probably not going to have any text.

Recently I went to a rather scholarly lecture by Catalin Avramescu, who has written some very interesting things about the cannibal in filosophy as the opposite of everything that makes a civilised man. Of course it's the ultimate taboo, but rather than first-hand accounts, through the ages man has been interested in cannibalism as a theoretical exercise.

Long story short, the "cannibal paradox" posed medieval theologists for a problem. The day of reckoning was always supposed to have the righteous dead rise from their graves, with God piecing together all the little bits that may have been scattered or even eaten by wild animals. (Early medieval frescos show wolves and lions throwing up their victims, very weird!) But a cannibal who has eaten another human being represents a paradox: the flesh of his victim has also become his, as he has absolved it. So those particles are in two places at one: in evil and in good. Not even God would be able to solve that puzzle. So this was quite upsetting. The idea of the resurrection of the flesh had to be moderated.

Somehow, gory pictures don't do it for me anymore. Ideas like these however I find quite inspiring.



On a side note: the crutches used by the half-man are authentic. You can find more about them on Got Medieval, one of my favored blogs.