Lovers of Battle
This one’s a mess.
Hunter and Slayer embracing one-another romantically while freshly-drenched in the carnage of some fantastical field of combat. They slew an array of otherworldly beasts, and they are so enamored with each other that they will forego all semblance of decency and immediately thrust themselves upon the other in a lustful frenzy, bloodied and viscera-drenched, if need be.
This perhaps my first concept of the doomed pair I created called Hunter and Slayer, a fever dream mish-mashing every thought I had that landed between ‘Cool,’ and ‘Interesting,’ ranging from Buffy the vampire Slayer, to Dark Souls, to Afro Samurai. The only original thing I could do to the whole treatment was to make my videogame-esque characters bad people, and to treat them like a joke; cycling from facing incredible danger and hardship and brushing it off by way of them being overpowered and largely unstoppable lawn mowers of anything remotely foe-shaped, then having them wade through the wanton destruction and mayhem they cause ad have them fuck each other senseless until they somehow decide to pick themselves up and wander to the next [mis]adventure. The true punchline of it all would be that they are cursed somehow by some dissatisfied observer of the world they inhabit to summon more fiends and monsters whenever they do so much as hold hands affectionately.
Thus we end up with [Hunter and Slayer], the ridiculous duo of hyperviolent morons who just want to get down on one-another but are always interrupted by a host of foes, be they fiend, fool, demon or beast. Their insatiable thirst for the other may be the cause of their ceaseless hardship and danger, a threat that drives them to seemingly ever-deeper attraction, one that further perpetuates the plight they suffer, and is a truly destructive consequence for other people in the world who may have a supernatural war erupt in their town because these two horny strangers found a moment’s refuge from the last terrible thing they likely caused.
The whole enterprise was crassly funny to me - for reasons - but some germ of the concept sticks with me now, and it took me a long time to approach HunterSlayer with a more respectful and nuanced hand to develop characters that I learned to love and respect without all this horseshit.
Speaking of horseshit…
I very much dislike this painting. I did not execute any understanding of atmospheric depth and perspective, the terrain is impossible to distinguish, and the characters are impossible to distinguish from the environmental elements, which is a shame, as the environment looks like ass (not the fun kind!) and they blend into it. There’s a beheaded dragon the background, and it doesn’t translate at all! bah!
My composition is not thought-out at all [check the sketches], and any clarity that I generated with the character designs is literally muddied with my liberal application of pitch-black pen strokes for blood (there’s a lot of this, and I took forever to learn to execute the effect tastefully, apologies in advance)
This painting is a collection of techniques and conceits that were far beyond my reach at the time, things like respecting the canvas and the medium with relation to the detail and scale that I was attempting to capture. It took a long time to learn how to do these kind of things even in isolation, let alone as a thematic whole that’s accomplishing anything as an art-piece.
The greatest failing of the work above is that it fails visual interpretation so hard that it obliviates any attempts at speaking beyond itself. I almost have to look upon it with a wholly downcast heart because I must explain the thing with such completeness and in-hand validation because the gaps in construction and execution are too great. I only have the luxury of knowing what the creator intended and envisioned for the conception of the thing. I made this for myself, but I must acknowledge that even for myself, the most intimate judge that I have access to, it is a fully failed attempt of art.
Originally prod. Nov26/2015
• Windsor & Newto/n India Ink
• Dip Pen (Hunt EX-Fine 512)
• Watercolor brush (Escoda Synth. Round Point 8)
