vexum-the-diviner

[vexum-the-diviner]

would take this as a side job

[vexum-the-diviner]

i don't super want to post this on my wizard blog and i really want to match the utter poetry which is this post but i have to show it to as many people as i can because it's just pure peak

Hiii, I was just wandering if you wouldn’t mind blabbing about the symbolism and stuff behind some of your design choices with the horse men that you might not have mentioned. Like with pestilence and death specifically I feel like there’s a lot of symbolism I’m picking up on without fully understanding. Like with Death’s sickle, both a homage to the classic scythe and a nod to the “reaping/harvesting” of souls. And with pestilence I feel like there’s something that I’m skirting around without grasping. The multiple legs strike me as a deliberate similarity to insects, and if I’m right I think that the rider is bound in a body bag type deal, similar to how disease and pestilence is so often both spread through the improper disposal of body’s, and how wide spread pestilence leads to mass graves filled with disease and the horrible anonymity that comes with being just one face in a pit of hundreds etc? All of this is, ofc, to say that I’ve adored your series of the horsemen so far and would go absolutely rabid for some insight on some of your design choices<3

My horsemen of the apocalypse! I will add the original commentary and some extras, less about the symbolism and more about what brought me to design them the way I did.

The symbolism is for you to chose, there is no wrong answer.

WAR

I can't bring myself to represent war with a cool knight. It's horror. War is a bound child crowned with shrapnel, tied to a wounded horse that is being pulled forward by unseen people.

I've read a handful of books regarding war. A lost quote said that it should be shown as horror, it should make generals vomit, it should make you sick. I haven't seen war but my family has.

It was the first horseman I've designed, and it was in my sketchbook for months (maybe over a year, maybe even more) before I had the courage to draw it. I was really scared about how people would react to a mutilated child.

Recommended reading: The Red Crown - Mikhail Bulgakov, a short story about a man coping with the loss of his brother in the war

FAMINE

Someone who lived thro a famine shared that their head was only occupied with thoughts of food. Famine consumes your mind. All animals were eaten. Neighbors gave their pets away cuz they couldn't do it themselves. People walked around town as if in a dazed dream, slowly

Recommended reading: The Last Witnesses - Svetlana Alexievitch, a collection of testimonials of people who were children when WW2 began. Some quotes below;

'''A cat! A cat!' Other children saw it and started chasing it. The educators were local habitants, looked at us as if we were insane. In Leningrad there were no living cats left...A living cat was a dream. Food for one month...We talked about it, but they didn't believe us.''

''During the first year of evacuation, we didn't notice nature, everything that was nature provoked in us only one desire - taste to see if it's edible. Only a year later I noticed the beauty of the Urals''

''I dreamt of catching a sparrow and eating it...''

''A candle burns and the shopgirl cuts the bread pieces. People follow her with their gaze. Her every movement...with burning eyes...crazed...and all that in silence.''

''People walked slowly through the city like shadows. Like in a dream...a deep dream...As in, you see it, but you think you're seeing a dream. Those sluggish movements...floating...As if a person walked on water and not on land.''

''In Leningrad there are a lot of monuments, but one is missing that should exist. They forgot about it. The monument to the dogs of the seige. Dear doggy, forgive me...''

I don't like talking about it. It made no sense to draw Famine with a horse.

PESTILENCE

Based on the notes of a doctor who said the most frightening thing about viral disease was how it didn’t frighten. People didn’t know or didn't care. They lived and spread until it was too late and they became another name on the record

The clothing being made out of shredding plastic is no coincidence; pollution is a form of pestilence too

Recommended reading: Notes from a Countryside Doctor - Mikhail Bulgakov. Roughly translated quote below;

''Ah, I verified that here syphilis was frightening precisely because it did not frighten. That was why I evoked that women.* I remembered her with a kind of affectionate respect: because she had been afraid. But she was the only one!''

*Early in the chapter, doctor mentions a woman that appeared in the clinic with a letter from her soldier husband, where he wrote that he had syphilis and told her she should go to the doctor too.

DEATH

Recommended reading: Voices of Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievitch. The Death of Ivan Ilitch - Lev Tolstoi

“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone - the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.”

Death is the only horseman that doesn’t need to mount their horse; they will reach everyone eventually. Who is the saddle for then? Open ended question because this one you have to figure out personally

Many people pointed out how the horse is a Clydesdale. Good eyes! I purposefully asked a friend to guide me towards what type of horses are the sturdiest and most-friendly looking. I drew the horse grazing. It's not injured, it doesn't gallop. It's grazing peacefully because life moves on.

This is the only design that had a painting serve as a base - The Reaper, by Alexey Venetsianov. Not much or nothing at all is written about, I saw it in a book. It is a literal reaper but it haunted me, as if it's portraying more than a person.

The choice to make it a woman was due to a book about a crematory (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty) that connected women to death because everyone born is bound to die.

Ahhh, I don't want to give it all away. It's fun to figure things out. About them all. From the enviroment, to the movement, to the horses themselves. Many people even mentioned details that I did not notice and didn't add purposefully that were so inspired and amazing. I truly mean that the interpretations of the public enrich the works even more than my own words. And it's an honor to share that work with everyone.

Thank you anon!

[vexum-the-diviner]

i'm 80% sure this is what the far feywild is like

[vexum-the-diviner]

top ten easiest ways to summon a portal to oblivion: 1. hate yourself

just remember, tense your shoulders, grit your teeth, take rapid shallow breaths and say to yourself ”oh shit, oh fuck, this is all my fault”

[vexum-the-diviner]

i mean, this one time i fucked up a homunculus spell

[vexum-the-diviner]

this type of art makes me foam at the mouth. i want to draw now. splendind.

earthsea

[vexum-the-diviner]

it's great that autism is portrayed as positive because it makes people like me

but

like

it also sucks because I'm tired all the time and I can't come up with sentences on the spot

Are you annoyed and frustrated whenever people portray neurodiversity as something "silly and non-serious" , when for me and many others, it's isolating, exhausting and terrible? Please only vote if you're actually ND

Yes, this makes me very annoyed

I am somewhat bothered by this

I'm not at all bothered

I actually prefer when ND is represented like this

Not ND

[vexum-the-diviner]

arguably a bad idea

what if I kill my self

[vexum-the-diviner]

RIGHT when i was about to start my vile destructive sky spell studies. y'all gatekeep too much smh

fyi i will be extending some dark tendrils across the sky later today. just a heads up

[vexum-the-diviner]

it's kinda fucked how when i'm off tumblr i can see posts that managed to surface to youtube comps and then when i'm on tumblr the comedy masterminds who formulated those thoughts are just like right there

[vexum-the-diviner]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Romanticism-inspired fantasy.

Joining inprnt’s print sale through the weekend 💜

[vexum-the-diviner]

friggin sweet dude

give it.

JUST BREWED UP A SICK POTION

[vexum-the-diviner]

how...

did i not THINK of that????

i have someone to call hold on

Should go without saying but never date a cop and christ never marry one. Rule of thumb if he's legally untouchable he's ethically unfuckable. You don't like that cop, you like buff men in tight clothing. I can show you more of those, better ones. Take my hand.

[vexum-the-diviner]

never marry an alchemist either. that lead is never gonna be gold.

Should go without saying but never date a cop and christ never marry one. Rule of thumb if he's legally untouchable he's ethically unfuckable. You don't like that cop, you like buff men in tight clothing. I can show you more of those, better ones. Take my hand.

[vexum-the-diviner]

hey quick favor can somebody give me a target i want an excuse to cast a Big Sky Spell

[vexum-the-diviner]

jesse. jesse which other chromatic dragon could possibly breathe frost. jesse you aren't considering making red dragons breathe frost jesse. jesse you can't do this jesse. JESSE

[vexum-the-diviner]

I think I'm gonna start saying "artists and painters"