Happy Halloween

No costume this year. I thought I had an idea for one, but couldn't get it together in time.

Anyhow, since yesterday's illness quarantine had me almost going a bit stir crazy I busted out some paper and pencils and jumped back into the weekly art jam forum I used to contribute a bit more regularly to (though honestly, it still wasn't that much).

Saw that one of the themes were redesigning Little Red Riding Hood. I could've gone with plenty of angles. Make her hot and buxom. Do a little bad ass Bulleta from Darkstalkers-esque thing. I played up qualities for the latter, and borrowing how in some incarnations it became this cautionary tale for young ladies against "wolves," turned it around and did a "Well, what if 'Little Red Riding Hood' started out as a cautionary tale for young male wolves just beginning to learn how to hunt?"

For one thing, it kind of is, since some versions dreadful things do happen to the wolf in the end. At the same time I decided to make Little Red Riding Hood more like the wolf bogeyman. Sort of 'If you don't do what the pack says and go off on your own, Little Red Riding Hood is going to come get ya!' type of thing?

Anyway, I even adapted Perrault's moral at the end of story, citing an "original" overheard by a village fool who fell asleep behind a haystack out in the fields after a drunken bender, only to wake up in the middle of the night to hear an old wolf scold a young one with a parable of sorts:

"From this story one learns that wolf cubs, especially young males, proud, brash and quick to prove, do very wrong to stalk strange prey on their own, And it is not an unheard thing if what they deem to be a young human lass is thereby provided with her dinner. I say young human lass, for all girls are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, allowing themselves to be stalked in the woods, and being ignorant when on cold winter nights a young wolf follows it to their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle girls are of all such creatures the most dangerous for they may not be little girls at all!" (snagged and rewritten from the Wikipedia version)

I even hinted that Little Red Riding Hood's hood was red not because it came that way, but becase it was more a rusty and ragged head covering, "dyed" in the dried and new blood of wolves.

It's not a fantastically well-executed one. I only had large pieces of paper left, so it's bigger than how I usually work and ADD set it pretty early on because of that. I got pretty into it until I couldn't handle all the detailing anymore and the Sudafed and the fever and there was just only so much I could do when the paper's too damn big to work with mechanical pencil and the only other pencils I had were from 2B and up for some goddamn reason and, no, I didn't want to use goddamn charcoal. Just what I need when I'm sick, breathing in miniscule powdered pieces of fucking charcoal, and like, just, just fucking everything made me sort of throw it across the room signaling that I was done with it. Then I had to scan it, in pieces...and stitch it together. You see the stitching. I really couldn't care less at this point.

Anyway, click to see the larger version. ::WARNING:: Not for those squicked out by blood and wolf pelts. I wouldn't be surprised if I get some angry letters from wolf lovers from this one. So to head them off: People! RED RIDING HOOD IS THE VILLAIN!!

Update: It looks like someone at imageshack did not like the image because it's been deleted or something. Oh well, gonna upload it directly here.