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trikaranos starts up again later this year (the formatting process to post longer comics to tumblr is not the vibe, decided to make a website to host it instead), also gladiators! we got gladiators too. reached out to an ancient rome artist & friend and got some advice on how to draw some of the helmets and armor, so gladiators are back in rotation. and renaissance art: finally acquired a veritable library of photo materials for references (thank you japanese photographers, I owe you my life) to start the set design process. might fuck around and adapt more of machiavelli's work into a comic also.

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it's been too hot to draw/finish anything in my WIP folder, so: an older comic page I never posted with Lucullus and Marcus :)

Of his affection for his brother Marcus there are many proofs, but the Romans dwell most upon the first. Although, namely, he was older than his brother, he was unwilling to hold office alone, but waited until his brother was of the proper age, and thus gained the favour of the people to such an extent that, although in absence from the city, he was elected aedile along with his brother.

-Lucullus, Plutarch

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it's been too hot to draw/finish anything in my WIP folder, so: an older comic page I never posted with Lucullus and Marcus :)

Of his affection for his brother Marcus there are many proofs, but the Romans dwell most upon the first. Although, namely, he was older than his brother, he was unwilling to hold office alone, but waited until his brother was of the proper age, and thus gained the favour of the people to such an extent that, although in absence from the city, he was elected aedile along with his brother.

-Lucullus, Plutarch

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unfinished thing of vipsania agrippina! for a brief moment I thought about blocking out a comic on octavian's miserable dynasty project but then I remembered I don't want to do that lol. a comic about vipsania agrippina is kinda tempting though. hm.

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any thoughts on the death of valentinian i? it’s definitely a memorable one for all the wrong reasons…

terribly, the only time I think about valentinian is when it's related to his brother, valens, so any thoughts I have about valentinian's death go directly to the ways that it impacted valens ghghghghgshghgh

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Do you have any thoughts about Sforzinda?

nothing specific, altho it does come up sometimes when I'm reading about other stuff. a vague collection of thoughts is like:

interesting architecture-philosophy stuff going on. everyone wants (to at least think about making) a radial city but at what costttttttt. the military motivations around ideal and frequently radial cities are interesting to read about, but a lot more people want to write about utopian schemas. something something the geometry & astrology aspects of it + the Sforzas and astrology. if it ever existed, I would love to read about it's inevitable and destructive fall. reading the Trattato di architettura was neat, it's kind of horny the way a lot of writing was tho, & that's…fun? compelling. architecture and sexuality go hand in hand, actually. eventually I'll bridge the gap between the Sforzinda and Filelfo's Sphortias and the dynasty plans of the Visconti-Sforza. there's a book on renaissance architecture planning that I should probably read that would solidify any of these thoughts, but I'm re reading Machiavelli so city planning will have to wait

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galeazzo & ascanio

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pindarus & cassius

this was going to be another entry into the hostile oracle deck that doesn't exist, but I'm still thinking about like. pindarus and uhhhhh. his legacy. agency. or the absence of agency, across the ancient accounts and then shakespeare and other narratives. & somewhere between plutarch and val max, I'm going to find a narrative sweet spot and commit to a hair style for pindarus that isn't this

anyway eventually those thoughts will sort themselves out and the visuals will become clear in my mind, probably when the weather is not what it currently is. and when that happens, I think I'll also give this "card" another go, as a standalone illustration bc about halfway through doing this one, I realized that it didnt fit the concept but I wanted to draw hands and finished it up anyway lmao.

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cassius and pindarus

this is another placeholder design until some thoughts I have about pindarus click into place, but it is fascinating to compare how ancient sources write of his involvement in cassius' death and what shakespeare does with it. also. hm. something particularly thorny going on in there, but that's no surprise since that comes with the territory wrt to roman&greek narratives involving slaves and freedmen.

anyway. thoughts! they are compelling. can't wait to figure out how to make them coherent. spartacus is in there, somehow. character design! sure is a task.

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caligula & eutychus

this is a placeholder design for eutychus, I just wanted to try something out before doing a comic about caligula and charioteers :p

He was so passionately devoted to the green faction that he constantly dined and spent the night in their stables, and in one of his revels with them he gave the driver Eutychus two million sesterces in gifts.

-Suet. Cal. 55

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unang mamamayan, ang emperador ng imperyong romano...

...caligula! and his loyal dog, macro!

I was reading about the history of shakespearean translation in the philippines and wanted to see what the cultural pulse on caligula (camus) was and ended up. back at shakespeare. somehow. you know in coriolanus, when marcius relays: "They said they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs, that hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, that meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not corn for the rich men only."

in a staging of titus andronicus, the creative team used dinaguan in a way that I'm still thinking about ever since I read this review

Rutaquio and the creative team did not pull their punches. That most-loved Pinoy meal, the dinuguan, for instance, became a metaphor for the spiritual and literal cannibalism that made beasts out of warriors. “[It was] the blood of people butchered like pigs in a slaughterhouse, their blood left to cool down on the floor then scooped with a plate to make stew… their bodies being collected by the clown of death as it mocks the senselessness of their deaths,” explained Rutaquio.

"--and when they had in consequence been pronounced public enemies, he starved them to death, Nero on the island of Pontia and Drusus in a lower room of the Palace. It is thought that Nero was forced to take his own life, since an executioner, who pretended that he came by authority of the senate, showed him the noose and hooks,⁠ but that Drusus was so tortured by hunger that he tried to eat the stuffing of his mattress; while the remains of both were so scattered that it was with difficulty that they could ever be collected." (Suet. Tib. 54) (also in Tac. Ann. 6.23)

everything is hungry, everything is a mouth. it's not enough for carthage to be defeated it must be destroyed entirely, it's not enough for the sons of germanicus to die they must be scattered beyond collection, the imperial body exists in unsustainable absolutes and it WILL eat itself. there's a lot of weird food and sacrifice related stuff going on with caligula.

anyway. caligula and macro, possibly on their way to plan a thyestean feast. senators and their wives are invited!

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Hey, I initially started following your blog for Ancient Rome stuff but thanks to your art im now also interested in all your stuff on the Medici's, Sforza's ect. and want to look deeper into this time period/these people. Are there any books/textbooks that you would recommend?

Thanks :)

for a broad overview/to get a feel for what the landscape is like, probably the Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance!

additionally

Peter Burke The Italian Renaissance: Culture and society

Lauro Martines, Power and imagination: City-states in Renaissance Italy

J. M. Najemy, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance

alternatively, pick a person who sounds interesting and dive into the broader topics from there. Machiavelli and Dante were my starting points, so it's the Prince + the Maurizio Viroli Machiavelli biography and the Divine Comedy for me

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hey ! i love your art, i feel like i haven't seen such precise and extraordinary lineart ever, so every bit of your art is always so good :D

i'm getting into the late roman republic thanks to you, and so i had one question for you : where do you find clothes references for your characters ? whether they are from antiquity or renaissance, i feel like your choices are always the right ones yet i can't seem to find the good pictures to take inspiration from...

lots of love from me anyway, and have a nice day <3

this ask from last year has my usual go to recommendations! not much has changed since then, but additionally: the society for creative anachronism has a lot of extremely dedicated people discussing costumes and clothing, they're my favorite people for the byzantine empire

I'm usually making costume design choices for comics, after I figure out what the basic shapes are, I'll go through the illustrator heavy weights, then theater and film productions and "read" those and build my own thoughts from there.

some other potential resources:

a. croom, roman clothing and fashion

MFA Boston's collection of greek and roman art

greek & roman art @ the Met

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thinking about conspirators in the renaissance. someday. eventually. I'm going to finish filelfo's sphortias, and then I'll get into romano's porcario

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the general concept for this was: it belongs to an oracle deck (non existent, this came out of a dream I had awhile back) where the illustrations are all romans and they all straight up tell you that everything is doomed to failure no matter what you pull lol

also this is quintus arrius

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crassus and quintus arrius

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Epaminondas & Pelopidas

maybe they're discussing polis strategy, maybe they're talking about the weather. possibly both!

this would be early on in their relationship, possibly shortly before they get stabbed to hell during the siege of mantinea. nothing cements the bonds of friendship quite like grievous injury :)