💀🖤 “Death is My Lover” Illustration
Hello everyone~ I am super excited to share this final work that I had been struggling to complete for a long time, as my seasoned patrons may remember! 🙇💦
About this piece, I had this initial concept, and too many ideas came at me all at once. I decided to keep it simple, and make this Little Death illustration a tribute to both of my big artist inspirations: Aubrey Beardsley, and Takato Yamamoto.
The title is from Yamamoto’s “Death is My Lover” painting. I am going to attach it here so you see the clear similarities! Even the boy (or at least I want to think they are a boy👀💦) bears a striking resemblance to our favorite tortured boy…
I’m fascinated by how both Yamamoto and Beardsley have mixed sexuality with fantastical horror in their art. These are exactly the type of themes I love to mix in my art~ 🖤
Discussing theme, I recently grasped that “Death and the Maiden,” or “Tod und das Mädchen“ in German, was a common motif in Renaissance art. It usually depicted a young woman being seized by a skeletal figure representing Death, pairing macabre themes with erotic subtext~💀💕(I know Callisto would like that)
Since Chapter 1 of Little Death is called “Death and the Boy,” the part of the “maiden” is subverted, but Ellery is just as sexually imperiled, if not more! To be totally honest, so much time has gone by since then that I do not know if it was an accident or merely art history brainworms taking over my mortal body. 😳💦