dark mother

[egypturnash]

Earlier this week a drawing jumped out of my sketchbook at me and demanded to go through the Illustrator process. I believe it's from May.

This happens, sometimes. Sometimes weird significance accretes, as well.


bandwidth: VCL

The basic figure was done and the background was starting to happen when a connection suddenly happened in my brain. A little Googling later, I decided that, yes, this seemed to be Lilith. Depending on how you read things, she is...

• Adam's first wife, who fled Eden rather than submit to him, never Fell, and sort of became a demon who's responsible for crib-death.
• the remnant of some proto-Hebrew Mother Goddess, who got demonized when Yahweh got all pissy about being the One And Only God.
• the female half of a demonic male/female pair that mirrors Adam and Eve - her husband is one Samel. In this version she may or may not be, or have begun as, a sort of conjoinment with Samel, and Adam and Eve begain as one conjoined being as well.
• the result of several generations of half-mad Kabbalist scholars taking one line in the Bible a bit too literally and creating a myth to explain it out of next to nothing.

Religion is funny that way.

The text is from various sources found during that Googling: the main text is an excerpt from Kabbalistic literature, streamlined, and the very faint text in the background is the beginning of a ritual for summoning her. Which I had a moment of dubiousness at pasting in.

I keep being vaguely drawn to Dark Feminine Principle kinds of deities lately. I don't know why.

Comments

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Very striking, Peggy, and haunting in that Sandman sort of way (sorry, I know you're not a big fan of Gaiman's fiction at least). Colors are a neat match, the text is nice. The only part that seems a little odd to me is her butt. It looks oddly twisted and underdrawn, as if her cheeks are one. Otherwise, it, too would make a great poster. You make AI sing like no one else I know.

-T'

[twotails.livejournal.com]

You make AI sing like no one else I know.

Very, very true.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The ass was reworked in AI - originally her hips were turned towards the viewer, with genitals half-shadowed, but that didn't match the strong torsion on the body. Someone commented on it on DA as well. I think a little revision is in order. Though I could say something about her being all, you know, serpentine and stuff.

Gaiman's stuff works fine as comics! He just falls flat for me as prose alone.

[mercurypale.livejournal.com]

print this one out as a poster

and then send it to me :}

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

<B !!!

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is very striking.

[wolphyn.livejournal.com]

I adore the way you merely suggest outline with swathes of value; so subtle. You are a master of negative/positive space.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I could not do it so easily without AI. Being able to rebuild something in whatever order I please is something I rely on; if I had to work back-to-front in paint I'd probably go mad. Or adapt a completely different approach...

[medox.livejournal.com]

I love your use of type here, simple and powerful. This is just a really gorgeous piece.