Villain and Hero Portraits - WIP

This series of portraits is another project I’m working on for Terrafirma for the purpose of world building. All the individuals presented in these are important historical or theological figures. Most of the ones I’ve created thus far are of the “bad guys”, the lieutenants of chaos who seek to sow discord and destruction wherever they go. Those are the ones bathed menacingly in red - just in case there was any doubt they were evil. These people are more akin to deities rather than regular people. They’ve been reincarnated throughout history and come up fairly regularly in the timeline. The green painting is similar, though of a much kinder origin. It presents the character Izan, who is almost a saint in the world of Terrafirma. But enough discussions about the lore, and more about my thought process for creating these!

Originally, I was just going to create the seven evil characters. I was inspired by the Francisco Goya Black Paintings. You may not know them by name, but it is likely you’ve seen his most famous painting from this series, Saturn Devouring His Son. It is a gruesome painting and is truly horrifying. Disturbing is the best way to describe it, especially considering there were over a dozen of these recovered. These paintings were found painted in black on his wall after his death. We don’t know why they were created, but we do know the ones found after his death had been painted over untold numbers of lost Black Paintings. The idea is simply horrifying - but to me, inspired a really interesting story that I wanted to incorporate into the world of Terrafirma. A painter driven mad by visions of demons and devils, resulting in his eventual death. But not before he created seven disturbing paintings directly on the walls of his home. I was also inspired by Clive Barker’s paintings, especially in his book Visions of Heaven and Hell, which is a beautifully disturbing and horrifying collection of vibrant and manic oil paintings. One day I would like to more closely emulate Goya or Barker’s style to have a more diegetic representation of the mad painter’s work, but I always wanted to create these in my own style to know how to work from there. It makes more sense to me to start with a lot of detail in a medium I’m comfortable with, then to transition to something new and different with less fidelity.

I also decided to branch out to doing portraits of other figures and not just the main bad guys of the world. I found myself asking, “What did this painter do before he went mad?” And the answer was, of course, he painted normal paintings of important and influential figures! Which is where the painting of Izan comes in, the first of the “good guys” in this series. I don’t think there really needs to be much altering before I could consider it wholly diegetic. Obviously this painter wouldn’t make use of cell shading, but that requires much less work than wholly changing the composition and aesthetic of a piece. Still, this is where the project rests and and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made thus far.