Author: Trung Cao

This queen renews life with no ideal bounds where death had apparently devoted the body. She pursues nature in its darkness, conceiving the horrors of secret toil. She carries a crown of horns from the decaying elements of uncounted years. Her senses once again gratified and refreshed by the taste of life’s nutrients, and she returns to a sight of uncanny beauty. The blood countess is the master of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter!

After feeding, the degraded and wasted once again flourish, filling the capillaries abundance of life force that rises to the surface of the skin to fill the face with the most needed texture of the living, blossoming the cheeks that had grown pale.

 

 

 

Wandered many days round the fines of hell, Orpheus rose to the surface broken. The spirit of his departed love seemed to flit around and cast a haunting shadow. He was given diligent instruction not to speak or look at his beloved Eurydice as he guides her to the light of the upper world. It was a magnificent gift of a second chance in life granted by Hades and Persephone, king and queen of the underworld, after their indulgence to Orpheus luring music. With his body tingled with uncontrollable sensitivity, heart raced rapidly, and anxiety mounted to agony, Orpheus turned around and gazed upon Eurydice. With an instant of horror filling their meeting eyes, she plunged into the abyss forever. Now his life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to him as he sat for days, with dark melancholy clouded every thought and forgetting the passing cares of life. It is finished, the beauty of that dream has vanished, and breathless horror and disgust now filled his heart. One day, ­­­­his body would be torn to pieces and his head will roll down a river in the company of Maenads. It will be in death that he will taste joy again.

WIP: I’m working on this fantasy portrait. It’s 18″ x 24″ on birch panel. This is the inking stage that I sometimes use after the sketching, more heavily than usual in this cause with an aid of a wet brush for blending. Display here are the warm grey markers I’m using, but I have so many that it varies what type and brand I use.

48″ x 60″, oil on canvas

The girl, the horse and the last flowering: “This was a luxury of sensation that I could not endure for long. The bodily exertion produces misery in my spirits that transcend all bounds of reason and reflection. I must become a free creature that breaks the bond, carrying the last flowering for a brief moment as I ride to the sunset with swiftness through the wind to everlasting tranquility.”

Of the scattered wasted bones of distant relatives embedded in the fiery stones, two warriors of serpent island stand high in battle, one is of human kind and another of a serpent hybrid. Determined to stand victorious, they tread through the organic land, side by side, clad in skin, bones and metal, clearing path of the violent thirsted creatures born of mutated waste. 

If this painting seems different than my other paintings, it’s because I used a different approach and was done with ink, water color and acrylic paint.

The completed painting:

The stages of the painting. Unfortunately, more stages could have been shown before the last image because that was the biggest leap and the most time consuming transition where I build up the layers of colors.

This is my current painting. There are times when I work more with acrylics to build the foundation and other times I go straight to oil colors. I don’t find that I like one approach more than others. It depends on many factors such as the subject, the size, the surface, and most importantly, my mood at the moment. My technical approach is malleable to achieve the outcome I desire. With this painting, I wanted to avoid the use of solvent-based medium and just happened to be too lazy to mix the color in advance while I’m still pondering on the color composition. Stay tuned for the color panel.

The Fall of Arachne:

Elements gathered around her coalescing into appendages, making eight prior to the transformation. She falls into a dream state at peace in the bed of dark water liberated from the awareness of the painful metamorphosis, a gift granted out of pity. Her cheeks and body, the last sign of a flesh pink, grew pale. Soon enough, she will forever live her life spinning and weaving, a grotesque reflection of her former beauty as one of the most proud and masterful weaver of Greece, only to cross path and insulted the goddess Athena in a weaving art contest. Transforming into the first spider by Athena, Arachne will both be cursed and live her passion doing what she does best.