Gooday everyone,
Welcome to the Deacon Corner. If you’re new here, these galleries dive into the inspirations behind the images you’ll find throughout the books posted on these pages. In these issues, I also like to share the commission details for each project, so readers can follow along with how these images came to life.
If there’s a particular piece you’re curious about, you can find all previous issues under my journal entries or linked directly beneath the images within each chapter.
Now before we begin, none of these beautiful art pieces would exist without the incredible talent of Sickjoe who is the creative force behind all the artwork in these books. Quite literally the heart and soul of this visual world. If you appreciate his work as much as I do, I encourage you to visit his gallery and explore more of his stunning creations.
Now, without further ado, let's take a look at the featured image and the commission details below.
Continuing with the Tyke theme, I'd like a piece with Decima this time. Even as a child, Decima was obsessed with the concept of love but was deeply depressed because of her inhuman half. Out of desperation, she attempts to cut off her legs using a kitchen knife but fails miserably when the Gnatu find her and force her to stop.
Decima: Tyke Decima looks a bit more disheveled in this scene. Her dress is torn, her hair is messy, and her calves are bandaged up to the tip of her toes like mummifying a serpent. She bleeds through her dressings, the wound under her knees still fresh. The fingers along her legs slap at her hands, her calves bearing vestigial fangs and hissing at her. Decima’s other half doesn’t trust her anymore…
Gnatu: These guys are a little different from before. Instead of wearing toolboxes, outlets, and drill bits, the Gnatu in the kitchens hide under tea kettles, skillets, pots, pans, and cracked sugar jars. They cover the countertops and floors, gathering around Decima to protect her from herself. Much like Morta, Decima begins emitting a code of her own. Her desire to be loved manifests in the charges around her, and the Gnatu drop to their knees offering her colorful tungsten washers like wedding bands, red, blue, green, purple, and gold, perfectly sized to her fingers. Decima’s serpentine calves may be pissed, but she blushes fiercely, unable to bottle her emotions. She has such a naive concept of love that she agrees to marry any who asks her, and thus begins her nervous tick of collecting wedding bands. Fact or fiction, Decima loses all desire to harm herself as the Gnatu have convinced her that she is beautiful. In summary, think of it as a really screwed up beauty and beast scene, only the tea kettles, pots, forks, and spoons aren’t sentient, but the things living in them are.
Background: We’re in the cathedral kitchens here, which maintain much of the structure from the main hall, built with lead pipes and cast-off steel bits. A very steampunk version of a kitchen with stove tops bearing open-ended pipes emitting heated steam to boil pots. The Gnatu prepare food on the countertops, chopping meat and onions with oversized knives, having to ride the blades like a seesaw back and forth. Large butcher knives hang overhead, an ominous reminder as to why Decima came to this place. Since she’s a child here, I’d rather err on the side of caution and have the violence implied, droplets of blood seeping through her bandages, knives hanging overhead, etc.