Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

The HP Beholder reveals are up. This year, I did Art.



I've never done art before. Whilst drawing for the Beholder, I did idly wonder why I never have done art before, and then it hit me: When I first joined fandom, my fannish tastes were very much slash-oriented. And while I enjoy writing slash, I don't particularly like drawing men. It's funny, I've never really realised it before: drawing women is so much more enjoyable than drawing men. And so I guess it never occurred to me to create fanart to begin with. As I was branching out in my fannish interests and started to focus on rare pairings, I somehow never thought of drawing them, because by that time I saw myself as a writer

And then I decided to create art for the HP Beholder, and I enjoyed it so much, I will have to take up drawing again.

For now, here are Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle.

Title: "Triptych: Seduction - Vows - Conception"
Recipient: Albalark
Artist: Donna Immaculata
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Merope Gaunt/Tom Riddle
Medium: Pencil, crayon, watercolours and charcoal on paper; collage
Warnings: None
Summary: Merope takes matters into her own hands.
Notes: Albalark had said she liked hopeful endings. This is as hopeful as it gets for Merope, I feel.

( Seduction Vows Conception )

I always knew that I would try to make it look period-appropriate. My initial idea was to create a surrealistic collage in the style of Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté, but it was surprisingly difficult to find good backgrounds. Eventually I decided to use slightly kitschy art nouveau motifs as frames and create a collage against textured, coloured backgrounds. I was dead-set on collage to make the characters look disconnected - from each other and from the world around them. Also, I could try out different backgrounds and frames without having to draw the characters from scratch every time.

Merope in the Seduction piece was the first character I drew. I spent an insane amount of time on her and still have preliminary sketches lying around. Poor Tom, I fear, never got as much attention as she did. In the first picture, I still managed to put reasonable effort into creating some details, such as his posture and the cigarette, but you can see how I can't be bothered with male characters: in the second pic, he is a grey block, and in the third one, he his mostly hidden behind Merope.

Despite the fact that Tom looks stiff and unnatural in the Vows piece, I am reasonably pleased with it, because by that time he isn't himself anymore. He is an object that Merope uses. They never interact, not once, not even when they're physically close.

So. This, in short, is the rationale behind the pictures. Oh, I should probably add that drawing and water colours are the only techniques I am familiar with. I wouldn't know how to create art digitally if my life depended on it.