Pestilence

This is my colored rendition of Pestilence lines by deviantAshtareth . This artwork is part of a series on the four horsemen (horsewomen?) of the Apocalypse. The other pieces in this series are War, Famine, and Death. The entire collection can be viewed as a single artwork, which I call The Four Ladies of the Apocalypse.

Instead of portraying the horsemen of the Apocalypse as ugly, scary guys, deviantAshtareth chose to draw them as hot ladies in the Art Nouveau style popularized by Alphonse Mucha. The way I colored these pieces does not have the gentle subtlety of Mucha, but I feel that my colors go pretty well with deviantAshtareth's lines nevertheless.

This painting is predominantly green, a color that is associated with both disease and hospitals. The Lady of Pestilence in this picture has a plague doctor's mask, but she isn't wearing it. She has donned a rather short dress, unlike medieval plague doctors who covered themselves from head to toe to avoid touching their patients. Her cheeks are flushed with the ruddy glow of health, a glow that is further enhanced by the lamp she carries.

I painted deviantAshtareth's horsemen of the Apocalypse in the reverse order that they appeared in the Bible. Death was the first piece that I painted, and Pestilence was the last. All along, I assumed that deviantAshtareth drew the horsemen as ladies just to make pretty Art Nouveau pieces, but now I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to this than simple gender bending. Perhaps these ladies aren't intended to be harbingers of doom after all. Perhaps they were drawn not as destroyers of the world but as healers. That would explain why Pestilence appears as a plague doctor and why she bears a lamp, a symbol of hope in the face of darkness. Why War's armor offers scant protection as if the lady is ready to lay down her arms, not take them up. Why Famine holds a glass of wine as if to celebrate the appearance of an apple on a tree that is desperately clinging to life. And why Death has her back turned on the bones on the ground as if to reject all reminders of our mortality.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into this whole thing. That's probably it. Well, I'm an artist, and as such, I like to dream.

Here's to dreams of a better world. 

Over 99% of this painting was created in Clip Studio Paint, a.k.a. Manga Studio. I did less than a minute of pre-processing in Photoshop to prep the line art, then I did the actual painting in Clip Studio Paint. Afterward, I did less than a minute of post-processing in Photoshop.