Sketch Commission - "Cicada"
Added 2023-08-13 23:08:52 +0000 UTCThe premise of this sketch (And at this point the sketch tier essentially means "I have an excuse not to render the fiddly parts" and/or "I can do whatever I want without edits") was a request from the client to portray the "true" shape of a character of theirs who is essentially the dream of a slumbering nascent insect god. As the dreamer awakens, the character ceases to exist, and returns to the subconscious of the divine cicada.
With the roughness of the sketch tier in play I was able to get away with little timesaving tricks like barely rendering the hands and only painting one wing segment, which I rapidly replicated and transformed into the mock-seraphic pinions seen here. This piece also represents a continued investment in the visual of rainbow haloes as an expression of "Overflowing life" or "Life hostile to life", like a divine algal bloom - it's living, it's vital, it's not "destructive", but it's presence depletes the environment of all other life. Vivid colours can come across as acid, chemical, hazardous under the right circumstances.
As an aside, since i'm staying in rural Oklahoma currently I was able to retrieve the hollowed body of an actual cicada from the yard to use as reference for this piece. Their bizarre "grill" mouths are sorely underappreciated as a design element in anthro insect morphology, at least outside of Japan, where Baltan-Seijin has made them immortal.
