Procreate brushes: Gesinski Ink (Inking), Tarkine or Melaleuca (sorry can’t remember which one but they’re both Textures), Grid (Textures), Splatter (Spraypaints), Drip (Spraypaints)

Total time (approx): 3.5-4 hours

background

I’ve always been enamored and fascinated by art that depicts women enacting violence against men. This is not because this is the kind of violence I wish to see employed in real life as a solution to dismantling misogyny (I mean, structural oppression doesn’t get toppled just because a few men get beheaded). I just feel there’s something very powerful, cathartic, and subversive to see women artistically portrayed as instigators and agents of the kind of violence that many women disproportionately face in real life because of colonial and imperial cisheteropatriarchy. In a feminist imaginary, a woman dealing ruthlessly with her oppressor is the norm. And the gap between that fantasy and what is reality, feels achingly resonant and worth exploring through art, even if it is only as a means of coping in a violently misogynistic world that is largely outside of my individual control.

Connected to that is my fascination with praying mantises and the Internet lore of the female praying mantis feasting on her male mate after mating. After doing a little more research, I learned that this doesn’t actually happen very often and when it does, the cannibalization is typically observed in a lab setting and not in the wild, which is so interesting to me. I think it speaks to how individual behaviors can be a direct or indirect result of conditions created or a change in environment, which can be applied to reflect on how women and non-men behave as a means of survival in conditions created by patriarchy. I mean, this could just be the overthinker in me but I gotta put my English degree (ie a propensity to overanalyze and make connections that aren’t necessarily materially there) to use somehow!

process

I started by Googling pictures of praying mantises and ended up relying on two different pictures as references for my drawing. The trickiest part was getting the proportions of the body right. As I was drawing, I realized how intricate the body of a praying mantis is! There’s so many little details I overlooked before because it was like hey, it’s an insect, I mean how many parts can it have, being so small? I’ve also grown to appreciate how long and elegant their bodies are.

The head of the praying mantis, in case you hadn’t noticed, is based on my head in a selfie I recently took, hahaha. The disembodied head in the praying mantis’s claws is loosely based on Jake Gyllenhaal, not because I have a personal vendetta against Jake Gyllenhaal (although yes I am Team Taylor Swift and support her grudge against him), I just wanted to draw someone who looks (and is) kinda douchey.

For extra macabre detailing, I added blood splatters, a gouged out eye, and a bloody puncture in Jake Gyllenhaal Knockoff’s head. ❤

The background was the second toughest part for me. I wasn’t satisfied with having a very plain canvas. After much experimenting and virtually + proverbially throwing paint on the wall to see what would look good, I settled on having a partial grid background, which I liked because it kind of gave the composition a sort of dystopian, disorderly feel.

final thoughts

Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I created! I’m starting to question my choice in the background but I’m going to tell that little voice to STFU, cus I am NOT redoing this shit!! If I was more skilled and less lazy, I think I would have gone for a more naturalistic background but eh…I mean that would kind of go against what I learned about female praying mantises anyway (that they don’t actually cannibalize their mates in their natural habitats). Okay, no more overanalyzing!