Traditional illustration — folklore & fantasy
PROJECTS/WORK
The High Womb (World Building Project)
An ongoing series of works depicting various mythological figures and scenes that are part of an original universe. The universe revolves around godly beings and the factions that worship them.
Portraits
A series of portraits depicting figures in different poses and in different costumes. Aimed for a more graphical character design for each one.Metal and Flesh: The Biomechanical World
A series influenced by the work of HR Giger, exploring the intersection between the organic/pulsating and the cold/metallic.Other Work
costasconsc@gmail.com
@visceral__visions
artstation.com/costasconsc
My work explores this duality, where love and beauty clash with intolerance and strife. Within this duality exists a horrible and brutal world which is at the same time loving and beautiful. This informs my work, alongside the normalization of grotesquery and its existence alongside beauty. Figures are depicted as divine and beautiful, yet wretched and grotesque; landscapes are vibrant and blooming with color, yet filled with suffering and horror.
With the island being a strong bastion of the Greek Orthodox Church, I attended many Orthodox Church ceremonies and sacraments as a child, not knowing fully at the time what they meant but still in awe of the spiritual energy that resided in these spaces and the liturgies within them. Today, I am still affected by the power of these churches, not so much by the faith itself, but by how ancient they are (some date back to the Crusades), and how alive they still feel, with their gazing saints within; still suffering, still loving. Some nestled in forests, others atop hills and mountains, they breathe with the land itself.
This spiritual power inspires my work greatly, with the imagery I portray often being tied to religious iconography and folklore, but inverting the divine beings that bring salvation to ones bringing conflict and hardship in exchange for the very salvation they are meant to offer. Cruelty merges with beauty and grace. In this, I create worlds outside our own, but parallel to it; surreal and mythological, these worlds are informed by the human experience and consciousness, chasing themes we obsess over, such as death, love, and survival.