most of my art has ended up in pen & ink. because I'm good at it; it's also quicker to create a finished piece. it works well for stuff like The Sadbook Collections. But it's not my favorite medium. as a child that was pencil. something about the physical sensation of it and the quality of the lines. gouache is similar to that for me. and here's the other thing: color is more expensive. when you print something on paper using colored ink, it's that much more expensive to produce. but you can't always bring the price of the product up along with that. black and white, then, is: minimalist. efficient. logical.
I do love working in monochrome. there's a kind of beautiful precision and shading you can do and it can be lovely—either soft or cold depending on how you use it.
but it's far less kind to mistakes. You have to decide each line as you put it down and leave it there.
Hades is Persephone's equal and opposite. the cover for this issue is based on that well-known image of Greek theatrical masks, tragedy and comedy together.
went on a tangent about funeral masks here. but that idea of the face... it's important.
so far we haven't seen Hades' face at all. We've heard him talking to Persephone.
of course, even as they are anthropomorphized, they are also forces of nature. we cannot really see or understand death no matter how much we try. but again and again we try, in order to remain close to the ones we lose.
but let's get back to the story. Persephone has no trouble admitting she has issues. Hades frames everything as logical. He has no face because it is the function of his role as death. But does he really have no face? no, he was a living being that puts on the mask just as anyone in a play does in order to inhabit his part. Hades doesn't see himself as a person, only a role. but he was not always death. before the gods split up their domains, he was just another child of the titans...
a note on clothing. I went for ancient Greek clothing here, as opposed to Persephone's modern outfit. Hades is wearing a chlamys, which is a cloak, used in ancient Greek military attire.
This article is available to read on Jstor with a free account: anger and the veil in ancient greek culture, by D.L. Cairns.
good stuff here:"Withdrawal as an expression of anger, of course, is a recurrent poetic theme [...] in the withdrawal of Demeter [...] her angry withdrawal, first from other gods, then from mortals, is manifested not only in physical separation but also in veiling. [...] One veils or conceals oneself in Greek culture when one's honor is impugned, impaired, or otherwise at stake (out of shame, out of anger, or when indulging in emotions which it is considered inappropriate to display in public) [...] the gesture conveys the basic fact of separation from the group. [...] Veiling also manifests a degree of self-control which is also a feature of the gesture in its association with other emotions, especially in its use as a mark of grief."