De Cristo a la Cosa

The last workshop I took with Diego Freyre was about the fundamentals of digital painting applied to characters. One of the assignments was to illustrate a mythical character and make them contemporary, so I chose Christ and decided to do a Cool Jesus a kind of rich kid, but one who probably has class consciousness. I mean, he’s the son of God, basically a Middle Eastern trust-fund kid.

European features? Nah. Caucasian, Palestinian (quite the topic, right). A Cool-Christ-Rich-Kid is someone who wears Gucci but with style; Cartier glasses but with style; flashy gold jewelry (real gold) but with style.

I based him on Jared Leto and, following Diego Freyre’s suggestion, I stylized him. I moved away from a realistic anatomical structure toward something more “grotesque,” with more interesting, striking shapes.

Happy with that exercise, I moved on to the next one: KURT RUSSELL, who was kind of a Jesus figure but as an ’80s action hero. As a kid, I once watched The Thing and it caught my attention, probably for very superficial reasons (the monster). I rewatched it recently as an adult (or so I think), and it completely blew my mind. I hadn’t grasped the depth of the film both Carpenter’s 1982 version and the 2011 remake by the Dutch director with the unpronounceable name.

While working on that study, right after the Jesus one, I kept thinking about how ideology and cults are like The Thing: an invisible threat that blends in. Everything seems cool, looks “fine,” well-behaved and suddenly it attacks, deforms, and reveals the real monster it is. But that’s just a very loose, personal interpretation about the dangers of ideology (or its sublime object, as Žižek would say).

Anyway, I painted a shot that really stood out to me: the flamethrower the only way to get rid of The Thing. I wanted to move away from a safe color choice toward something less conventional, and I also thought about adding another possible piece from the remake the counterpart to Kurt Russell in that film, Kate Lloyd, played by the actress who played Ramona in the Scott Pilgrim live-action movie. That one stayed just as an idea, though I didn’t finish it.

I’m leaving the process here, and maybe somewhere between The Thing, Kurt Russell, and Christ, we can find some similarities. Maybe deep down they’re all connected by cosmic horror, charismatic personalities, big pecs, great hair, and a spectacular beard.