Giuseppe lets us into his thinking behind his Exquisite Corpse piece: "I wasn't too sure how to continue the visual narrative of the theme after the previous panels so I decided to take a few key elements from those panels and just give them my own twist. The image is a blend, if you like, of Simon's woman (female bust), Bart's holed wing (the hole in her stomach) and the reptiles very loosely themed to your crocodile, all in one big anthropomorphic monster. The statue-like reference is there to represent the idea of a fetish/symbol of our Exquisite Corpse. The vaguely Corinthian-like capital from which she emerges reminded me of the Greek caryatids in Athens, just to reinforce the idea of a cold piece of marble... Don't ask me why I didn't do any preliminary sketches, I just went for it and "took a line" for a wander on that very same piece of paper
As for the technique, as I mentioned there was a lot of smudging, then pencil shading on top of it, then erasing to obtain areas of light, then repeat the process over and over until I got the smoothness I was looking for.
I hadn't done anything like this for a very long time, last recorded time I did was back in 1999 and produced this:
(Do have a look at these other images at the link above, they really quite spectacular and spooky - Ed).
So you can tell my style hasn't really changed or progressed since... One thing I can tell you for sure is that I really had a lot of fun doing it again!
This piece promotes the Blackwing as an extension to, what we presume, Medusa's hairstyle - where snakes, hair follicles and feathers vie for attention. As Giuseppe states on his website, "Religion and pagan rituals coexist to this day, in a chaotic blend of surreal beliefs where messages from the dead are still coming to us in our dreams." It adds so many motifs, classical mythology, sculpture and maybe a hint of Henry Moore's internal spaces. But I leave it to you to make your own mind up, but don't look Medusa straight in the face otherwise you may turn into stone.
It will be interesting to see where Tim goes next with his Exquisite Panel.
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