Co. Galway, October 2023

Beltane is coming

I've read a 1912 compendium of criminal case studies featuring peasant girls and women from all corners of former Russian Empire as perpetrators, and I couldn't shake the thought of all those 16, 17, 18 year olds driven to killing themselves, their unwanted children, their husbands two or three times them older who were essentially r*ping them for years. Hence the little mermaid - a Slavic edition (in Slavic folklore, mermaids are a type of the undead). All violence starts with domestic and gender-based violence. Russia is a terrorist state and always has been. Down with empires.

Killora graveyard & church, Co. Galway, Ireland

This was a home once - Part I

Maybe the The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne? After all, it has love spells, chases, shapeshifting, boars, criminal shenanigans, and a hurling match! Also Finn and his insecure boomer ego though.

I did not like the official Inktober 2023 prompt list much, so I made my own one based on Irish mythology, for fellow Celticists and otherwise enjoyers. Everyone is welcome to share and join!

The background is designed after a gold lunula found in Killarney (~2000 BC).

Can we talk for a minute about how badass Mess Búachalla really is?

I mean, having been of royal birth but disowned, dispossessed and fostered in a very poor family, having experienced hard toil to its fullest, then raped either by some shady Tuatha Dé Danann guy with a penchant for glamouring himself into a bird or by her own biological father even (depends on the text), with an unwanted pregnancy forced upon her, and still she takes back what's hers, becomes the Queen Mother of the whole island of Ireland, and yes, the shapeshifting prick gets what he deserves (hence the bloodied feathers I put under her foot in this one).

The Wren Prince VIII - The Transformation

Near Mannin Castle, Co. Galway

This is where I’m heading right now to lose myself in the woods and the timelessness for three days and three nights of you know what

Learning color in traditional art