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Jedakk's Masterpiece

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So sorry to learn of the difficulties you and your wife have been dealing with, Jedakk. I hope things are getting back to normal for you both.

Thanks for continuing to provide us with these lovely images.

You're welcome! It has been a challenge. Now I have a neighbor who needs help too. Her husband is in the hospital, don't know if he'll make it. At this point it might be a relief for him if he didn't. Anyway, doing a little plumbing for her, then got a call from her to remove a snake from her kitchen. I'm the resident expert on snakes, so I'm the person neighbors call if they encounter one. Non-venomous, very docile variety, I caught it, moved it to a better environment. Then there was the dead rat that needed removal. Sounds like "Dirty Jobs", the TV show.

I also hope that you have been clear of the latest storm!
No tornado sightings!!

We fortunately missed that weather! The snowfall was incredible. I was looking at pictures of our granddaughter's house in Colorado Springs earlier. Nobody is going anywhere there for a while.
 
You're welcome! It has been a challenge. Now I have a neighbor who needs help too. Her husband is in the hospital, don't know if he'll make it. At this point it might be a relief for him if he didn't. Anyway, doing a little plumbing for her, then got a call from her to remove a snake from her kitchen. I'm the resident expert on snakes, so I'm the person neighbors call if they encounter one. Non-venomous, very docile variety, I caught it, moved it to a better environment. Then there was the dead rat that needed removal. Sounds like "Dirty Jobs", the TV show.



We fortunately missed that weather! The snowfall was incredible. I was looking at pictures of our granddaughter's house in Colorado Springs earlier. Nobody is going anywhere there for a while.
Good luck, I wouldn't know one end of a snake from the other!
Yeah, that weather was pretty messy!
 
You're welcome! It has been a challenge. Now I have a neighbor who needs help too. Her husband is in the hospital, don't know if he'll make it. At this point it might be a relief for him if he didn't. Anyway, doing a little plumbing for her, then got a call from her to remove a snake from her kitchen. I'm the resident expert on snakes, so I'm the person neighbors call if they encounter one. Non-venomous, very docile variety, I caught it, moved it to a better environment. Then there was the dead rat that needed removal. Sounds like "Dirty Jobs", the TV show.



We fortunately missed that weather! The snowfall was incredible. I was looking at pictures of our granddaughter's house in Colorado Springs earlier. Nobody is going anywhere there for a while.
As you relate to us about you being the "resident snake guy", I wondered if the title of (one of) your ever enriching masterpiec "The Seprpent's Eye" was a wonderful example of serendipity. Truly masterful, if so!
 
As you relate to us about you being the "resident snake guy", I wondered if the title of (one of) your ever enriching masterpiec "The Seprpent's Eye" was a wonderful example of serendipity. Truly masterful, if so!
I actually had not thought of that! Just a coincidence I guess. When I first wrote the story, I used the analogy of a moth to a flame - that which fascinates it also destroys it. The only time it was used was in the last chapter, when Balbus is talking to Julia Lepida about her slave, Sabina.

But then I needed a good title for the story and "Moth to the Flame" wasn't all that catchy. So I started thinking of other things that conveyed a similar meaning, and "The Serpent's Eye" occurred to me. Certainly because I was aware of that myth about serpents and mice, maybe because of my familiarity with reptiles and how they hunt. I'm not at all inclined to keep snakes as pets, although I did some when I was a boy of about ten or so. I don't bother with that anymore.

So I went back and edited Balbus line from the original 2007 story, which had been titled "From the Ashes". This is what it was originally:

"There are women who like it rough, there are some who like to be tied up and whipped, and there are a few, like she was, that don’t have any limits. Like moths, they dance around and around the flame. They know it will destroy them but their fascination is so strong that they couldn’t stop even if they wanted to. In the end, they get too close and it consumes them."​

And this is what it changed to a few months later in 2007 when I first posted the text-only version, no illustrations, as "The Serpent's Eye":

"There are women who like it rough, there are some who like to be tied up and whipped, and there are a few, like she was, that don’t have any limits. There is a spell that binds them the same way a mouse is fascinated by a serpent’s eye. They will not save themselves, and in the end, it devours them."​
So an altogether better line, less wordy and maybe, replacing the passive candle flame with the image of a snake rising up to strike, invokes more horror for many readers.
 
I know many of you are looking forward to seeing Sabina's feet nailed, but you're just going to have to wait. There will be several scenes of preparation as the executioner's helpers finish tying Sabina's feet in place, she lifts herself up on the ropes, the executioner probes her foot, places the nail and draws his hammer back, and strikes the first blow. It will take several blows to drive it down while Sabina struggles and writhes, all the while trying to avoid slipping down onto the cornu. Then there's another foot.

Each scene takes time to construct, ropes are a royal pain in the ass, and there are 25 people in these scenes, all of whom may change position and pose and have a different expression to reflect how they react to watching a naked slave girl being crucified.

In this scene, Ajax is just finishing tying Sabina's feet in place, pulling the rope tight. Antius is dropping to his knees next to the cross, getting into position to nail her feet as the crowd watches. Sabina stares in horror, her body twisting, struggling to put space between her and the executioner, but her feet are already bound tightly in place. Sabina narrates this part:

I saw movement to my right, looked down and saw the executioner kneeling down next to the base of my cross, getting into position to drive the two iron spikes through my feet. He held the hammer in his right hand and the two spikes in his left. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, moaning in horror, desperately wanting to escape, twisting my body away from him helplessly.​
I felt the rough end of the cornu digging into my buttocks as I struggled, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except getting even a little distance between my body and the executioner. But my feet, already tightly bound to the cross, refused to budge.​
 

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You make 25 feel like a hundred. I can guarantee that i haven't counted them out, and I doubt many other people would have either. I absolutely respect your decision to bring to live a crucifixion by painstakingly crafting ever single detail of the process, solving problems like you were the carpenter or executioner that was really there. Take your time, some of us know how to relax and drink in all of the detail!
 
You make 25 feel like a hundred. I can guarantee that i haven't counted them out, and I doubt many other people would have either.
Certainly my own attention has always been riveted on Sabina’s body, in all her various iterations. :babeando:
 

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I know many of you are looking forward to seeing Sabina's feet nailed, but you're just going to have to wait. There will be several scenes of preparation as the executioner's helpers finish tying Sabina's feet in place, she lifts herself up on the ropes, the executioner probes her foot, places the nail and draws his hammer back, and strikes the first blow. It will take several blows to drive it down while Sabina struggles and writhes, all the while trying to avoid slipping down onto the cornu. Then there's another foot.

Each scene takes time to construct, ropes are a royal pain in the ass, and there are 25 people in these scenes, all of whom may change position and pose and have a different expression to reflect how they react to watching a naked slave girl being crucified.

In this scene, Ajax is just finishing tying Sabina's feet in place, pulling the rope tight. Antius is dropping to his knees next to the cross, getting into position to nail her feet as the crowd watches. Sabina stares in horror, her body twisting, struggling to put space between her and the executioner, but her feet are already bound tightly in place. Sabina narrates this part:

I saw movement to my right, looked down and saw the executioner kneeling down next to the base of my cross, getting into position to drive the two iron spikes through my feet. He held the hammer in his right hand and the two spikes in his left. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, moaning in horror, desperately wanting to escape, twisting my body away from him helplessly.​
I felt the rough end of the cornu digging into my buttocks as I struggled, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except getting even a little distance between my body and the executioner. But my feet, already tightly bound to the cross, refused to budge.​
Another masterful job!
 
I know many of you are looking forward to seeing Sabina's feet nailed, but you're just going to have to wait. There will be several scenes of preparation as the executioner's helpers finish tying Sabina's feet in place, she lifts herself up on the ropes, the executioner probes her foot, places the nail and draws his hammer back, and strikes the first blow. It will take several blows to drive it down while Sabina struggles and writhes, all the while trying to avoid slipping down onto the cornu. Then there's another foot.

Each scene takes time to construct, ropes are a royal pain in the ass, and there are 25 people in these scenes, all of whom may change position and pose and have a different expression to reflect how they react to watching a naked slave girl being crucified.

In this scene, Ajax is just finishing tying Sabina's feet in place, pulling the rope tight. Antius is dropping to his knees next to the cross, getting into position to nail her feet as the crowd watches. Sabina stares in horror, her body twisting, struggling to put space between her and the executioner, but her feet are already bound tightly in place. Sabina narrates this part:

I saw movement to my right, looked down and saw the executioner kneeling down next to the base of my cross, getting into position to drive the two iron spikes through my feet. He held the hammer in his right hand and the two spikes in his left. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, moaning in horror, desperately wanting to escape, twisting my body away from him helplessly.​
I felt the rough end of the cornu digging into my buttocks as I struggled, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except getting even a little distance between my body and the executioner. But my feet, already tightly bound to the cross, refused to budge.​
Wondeful, jeddak ! It will be a great scene, the nailing of the Sabina's feet ! Thank you.
 
You make 25 feel like a hundred. I can guarantee that i haven't counted them out, and I doubt many other people would have either. I absolutely respect your decision to bring to live a crucifixion by painstakingly crafting ever single detail of the process, solving problems like you were the carpenter or executioner that was really there. Take your time, some of us know how to relax and drink in all of the detail!
There are a couple of views where I tried to squeeze nearly all of them in. There should be 21 of them visible in this view:
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I made two people invisible that would have blocked the view of Sabina, and there are two people walking down the road out in front of the crosses whom you rarely see.

In this view, I think there are 21 people visible also, but the ones who were invisible in the view above are now visible - a guy in a long tunic, dark maroon, and another guy with a dark green tunic and gray pants. Now the fat drunk guy and the little black girl are invisible.

Sabina Nailing Scene 16b-40_0001.jpg

One thing that maybe helps give the illusion that there are more people than that is they are pretty tightly grouped, a lot tighter than I originally had them in earlier versions of these illustrations. When I first did scenes with a crowd, actually got the capability to work with scenes this large, I had to decide how close people would stand to watch a crucifixion. I was thinking maybe ten or twelve feet. But in a render, you ended up seeing four or five of them at a time. Then much later I tried pulling the crowd in as close as they could be without running into the executioners and loved the effect, so this is what we have now.
 
Some more renders of this scene:

Now imagine, ladies, yourselves in renders two and three below: You're totally naked in public. You've been whipped like an animal, driven through the streets among jeering people to this hilltop strewn with crosses and scattered human bones. Big strong men pinned you down while the executioner drove nails through your wrists, they mercilessly dragged you by those nails to your cross and lifted you up until your feet were dangling and kicking. The pain was incredible, so bad that you fainted. You're on the edge of fainting again now, as they tie your feet to the cross, tightly, so you can't move them. The ropes cut into the tops of your feet, your toes clench against the timber. Your head is swimming, the sun in your eyes. This can't be real. All you can do is watch in horror as the executioner below you kneels and gets into position to drive those big iron nails through your feet.
 

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Had a thought, what if a officer of the Praetorian Guard showed up about now. He was curious because of the rumor he had heard of a beautiful girl being executed.
Another thread to the story?
 
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