say whatever you like but being covered in the blood of your (now murdered) gay artist friend who painted your potrait which was so life like you decided to trade your soul for the beauty and youth depicted in it is the most gayest thing a man can do.
Another week of GLFF! This week the book was Dorian Gray
[ID two illustrations.
1. Basil Hallward, a man with medium brown skin and curly auburn hair tied up with a white scarf, stands on the far right, he is facing away from the viewer and holding a palette and paint brush. He is working on a portrait of Dorian Gray, a pale man with curly blond hair. Further away from the viewer is a purple couch, and a wall with large windows, the couch is the same as the one in Dorian’s portrait, so it appears like Basil is painting from life.
2. a closeup on the same illustration, focused on Basil painting/end ID]
A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.
“Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. […] I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in my art…. Of course, I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. […] You would not have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in YOU. […] I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it.”
Basil Hallward, The Picture of Dorian Gray, O. Wilde
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”
“But why not?”
“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”
Given the nice feedback that the comic about Basil Hallward, painter of the Picture of Dorian Gray is getting, I thought some of you may want to take a look at the process behind it, so I set the Patreon dossier about it for public access (free).
The dossier post includes initial concepts, sketches, photo references and even further world building ideas.
Another scene from the comic about Basil Hallward, painter of the Dorian Gray portrait, as he keeps immortalizing subjects through the decades. I’m very close to finish it, regular updates on Patreon.
