Mechtild's

Take that brain off the fire, Ellin. You'll need some for work. ;)

Thanks for weighing in, Ellin. *smooch*

Yes, I'm a fan of drapes, no doubt about it. It seems that artists felt they couldn't really endow their subjects when portrayed fully nude. Not tasteful. Not noble to have a noticeable member.

Beautiful nude males fared much better when veiled by drapes. Classical artists seemed to feel free to suggest a lot more *vitality* when it could be done under cover.

Scarlet, I'm repeating this message to everyone who liked this.

I am so crazy about #2, in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area in the other one.

I needed to do it again from scratch to make the correction, but I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

You had't seen the first one? The pinks-and-orchids one? You could never have opened up the manip album link, then. I did post it publically, but that was in The Harem (since, like most of the "Art Travesties," I made it before I had an LJ).

I think when Psyche gets to Mt. Olympus and is made an immortal, she'll get some sort of magic hair assist. Even Tolkien's Elves seemed not to have serious bad hair days unless being kept prisoner and tormented by Morgoth. It was an elf who dissed Turin for poor hair upkeep.

Scarlet, I'm repeating this message to everyone who liked this.

I am so crazy about #2, in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area in the other one.

I needed to do it again from scratch to make the correction, but I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

These manips turn me on.

I confess they do that to me, too. I really, really love the sort of body Bouguereau gives his Cupid -- both of them. It's always been difficult looking through art and photos of nude men thought to be beautiful, to find ones that are delineated but not in the least "herky". I want my Frodo to retain that "beautiful youth" look, which implies less built-up muscles.

Bouguereau does awfully nice skin for the Cupids, too.

And drapes. :D

Este, I am so crazy about #2, in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area in the other one.

I needed to do it again from scratch to make the correction, but I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

Thanks, Mariole. I prefer version 2, too, although I may have to re-do it to be perfectly happy. For some reason, when I was preparing the face cut-out, it would not let me do the "feathered edges" selection, which makes for a softer blend at the chin line.

The face suited the compostition really well, though, I thought.

I just wanted you to know I redid, version 2 and re-posted it. I just wasn't happy with that sharp chin edge. I like the new version much better, which had to be done from scratch, so everything about the head and hair is a tad different.

My pleasure. Literally.

Thank you, Lembas, for commenting. Yes, that Bouguereau really knew how to make swoony males. His females are pretty swoony, too, but it's the men I want.

Perhaps his swoony art is the forerunner of all the covers of grocery store romances?

Mews, I'm repeating this message to everyone who liked this.

I am so crazy about version #2 of the new manip (of the 1889 painting), in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area.

In order to make the correction, I needed to do it again from scratch. I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

Thanks so much for your comments! If you have never seen the Art Travesties, you might open the link and go through the images some time, full size. Some are so-so, some are funny, but some are gorgeous. I have been learning as I go along.

I think everyone agrees #2 with the profile is the better of the two. I think I will make the first one into a link, instead, so it won't be distracting.

Thank you, Mews. I just checked and saw that I set-up everything for the link at the bottom of the entry, above, but never put in the url! I just fixed that.

Otherwise, there is always a link to them in the left-hand border of the main page of any of my journal entries, and I keep a link posted on my User Info page.

Yes, "Frodo Before the Fire" is quite a manip. I, too, thought that face went with it perfectly. It was important to me, too, that Frodo's face not be directed at the viewer, which would make it seem as though Frodo posed for racy pin-ups. I liked the look of "catching him in the moment," as if he had just bathed and was drying before the warmth of the fire, leaving what he might be thinking about to the imagination of the viewer.

But I couldn't have done it without the plain-faced young man in the original soft-core nude (lent me very nicely by Shoesparks, who had done an EW manip with the more x-rated crop of it). If I knew who he was, I'd send him a letter thanking his for the use of his torso! I was very ambivalent about using a real body, actually -- that is -- from a photograph rather than a painting. I wrote extensively on it when I first posted the manip in my LJ.

Taerie, I'm repeating this message to everyone who liked this:

I am so crazy about version #2 of the new manip (of the 1889 painting), in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area.

In order to make the correction, I needed to do it again from scratch. I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

I think everyone agrees #2 with the profile is the better of the two. I think I will make the first one into a link, instead, so it won't be distracting.

Taerie, you are so right about the body type. I had a HECK of a time finding a nude male photograph on the internet for his type. All the porn sites showed these really, really studly, heavily-muscled guys. They wouldn't do at all. Bouguereau's Cupids are the best though, hands down. (Hands on?)

Erase her face please and put mine on.

You know, I put Lembas' face into my manip of the Frodo in Vermeer's "Girl with a Wine Glass". It didn't come out that well, but it made a cute little joke present. Finding a proper face from one's own photos of oneself is quite a challenge. Few people have a thousand beautiful close-ups to choose from, but film-Frodo does.

Eeep, that's EXACTLY how I want to be carried off to heaven by Frodo (or Elijah, if Frodo is not available).... *giggles*

Seriously, I have more than once written that when I die, I want God to send film-Frodo to be my angel of death; my "Charon" to accompany me over the river Styx; my Eros to bear me up to paradise. But I am actually not kidding. I really love him, and I believe Tolkien's story, especially the character of Frodo in it, are mediums for grace (or can be).

Frodosweetstuff, I'm repeating the message below to everyone who liked this and may have seen only the first #2 that I posted:

I am so crazy about version #2 of the new manip (of the 1889 painting), in case you saved it, I want you to know I redid and reposted it (in the Photobucket, too). I just wasn't happy with the chin area. In order to make the correction, I needed to do it again from scratch. I like the new version much better, although the differences are subtle. I airbrushed out the obvious flaws on the copy's surface, too.

People seem to agree that #2 (with the profile) is the better of the two. I think I will make the first one into a link, instead, so it won't be distracting.

Igraine! I was SO hoping you would drop by, as a fan of the Cupid and Psyche myth. If I could find a painting of Cupid bearing a man to heaven, I would certainly make a manip of it to go with your GORGEOUS Frodo story, Psyche.

Bouguerau, whatever he was like in real life, I kiss his paint-smeared fingers for having made such paintings, that we might enjoy gazing at film-Frodo starring in them. *sigh*

I meant to say how great I thought your choice of icon was, to illustrate your comment. :D

Hi, Igraine! Estë suggested posting a drawing (about which I knew nothing) by Trilliah, which shows a winged Sam bearing Frodo heavenwards.

Trilliah's Guardian Angel:



Here's a link to the large version of it for downloading:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/mechtild/LOTR%20images/guardianangelbyTrilliah.jpg

This drawing is obviously based on the 1895 Bouguereau, but she's put a whole different spin on it. I don't mean the male-male thing. I mean the tone, the emotional feel of it.

I wrote to Estë, when she emailed it just now, if it weren't for the coy way the drapes cover Frodo's hips, this could be a gen drawing. Frodo, unlike Psyche in the orginal painting, does not appear to be swooning with happiness, but collapsed with relief - perhaps at being safe and rescued at last. Sam's angel looks lovingly worried.

When I opened this drawing, it reminded me immediately of the scene in Cirith Ungol, when Sam was moved to his depths by compassion at the sight of the semi-conscious Frodo naked, bound, obviously having suffered torment. Sam cradles a woozy Frodo in that brief little scene -- tenderly, protectively. Five minutes of high-octane respite that Frodo could have got from nowhere else in that circumstance except by direct intervention of the Valar.

I wish the artist had let Frodo be naked, therefore. It wouldn't look lascivious in this case. Or, she could have stopped the drawing higher up, if she didn't want the genitals to show. I see this drawing as a sort of "reader's vision" of the Cirith Ungol embrace. Tolkien sent Frodo, in a state of deepest distress and abandonment, a rescuer, a guardian, "an angel".

When I read this scene, I usually identify with Sam, since it's from his POV. With Sam I see my beloved Frodo in terrible distress and my insides unravel and ravel again. But I also experience the scene with Frodo, even if he's not conscious. I, too, get to places in my life when I seem trapped, abandoned, with no hope or help in sight. When Sam comes, I feel it with Frodo, if sub-consciously: how reviving, how healing, how hope-engendering to be rescued and comforted by someone who loves and cares about me.

Trilliah's image could have been a muzzy dream of Frodo's -- he expected a devil [an orc] but got an angel [Sam].

Aw, just talking.

Hey, Igraine, I gushed some more about the work you did with Frodo/Cupid's wings in Psyche in the comment to Estë, below, if you want to look. :)

Hi, Igraine, back one more time.

I just wanted to post this other "Cupid and Psyche" work by Bouguereau I found on an internet art site. It's a preparatory drawing, obviously, for the painting I just manipped.

Anyway, I think it's extremely beautiful, perhaps, even lovelier and more evocative than the final painting. I am sorry I could not find a bigger image of it.

If you are friends with Trilliah, maybe she could do another drawing based on this version, this time, but characterizing Frodo as Cupid and Sam as Psyche, as an illustration to your fic?


Here's William Bourguereau's drawing for the 1889 "Cupid and Psyche":





~ Mechtild

Ah, "Trillah", not, "Trilliah"? Yes, it is more a gen pic. I suppose if she had left Frodo Cirith-Ungol-naked, it couldn't have been gen. No, it would be gen, but more highly-rated gen. (Ah, all these distinctions - they're here to stay, both their blessings and curses.)

Yes, you note well the smallness of the wings. Did you notice Psyche has itty-bitty butterfly wings? Unless the print is very large it's hard to discern them. Those wings are so comically tiny, they seem to underscore the sense that the wings are not supposed to work in any literal, mechanical sense.

I suppose Bouguereau might have wanted to show the wings as big as they really ought to be, but he had to make them smaller in order to fit in their entirety in these compositions. When I saw those wings, I thought of John Howe talking on the DVD extras about what would be the necessary wingspread for the Nazgul to be able to fly.

I must say, I never got the impression that your Frodo's wings were anything less than full-sized wings. You described literally thrilling -- and thrilled -- wings. In your story, when he extended them, in my mind they vibrated with his accumulated intensity, making a sound like when peacocks make when they are displaying. Peacocks vibrate they their fully-fanned tails while they slowly turn about during their displays. It looks neat, but it sounds even neater.

Yes, that is very much the sound I imagined when writing. All those feathers "ripping open" and quivering.

To my mind they were an physical expression of Frodo's desire.

That is exactly how it came across to me. I thought it was an absolutely brilliant metaphor for how it would feel or seem -- to both of them. Sam was affected by the nearness, the spectacle of those wings, even if he couldn't see but only sense and hear and feel them. With those wings "ripped open," upstretched, and vibrating in the dark, Sam (and the reader) was held almost awestruck before what he could tell had to be a magnificent, alive, potent being, something beyond his imaginings.

Frodo, himself, seemed to experience himself as "rampant", too. If you used the literal image of an erection, it would have severely limited what I sensed in the "rampant-ness" conveyed in those wings. It went beyond a matter of an excited sexual part, but a whole person that excited: 'rampant' in body, heart, spirit, and mind. Those wings gave a sense of that. "Rampant" -- "rearing up", "spread wide, as if in fear or menace". The wings opening and vibrating and shaking made me feel as if every hair on Frodo were standing up, every cell in his brain thrumming: ready, primed, expectant, "quivering", inside and out. It was just perfect.

Oh, I should just re-read the story!

*kisses Igraine's writerly hands once again*

Thanks, Estë, I got your email. I'll post the picture to Igraine's comment so she'll see it.

I'll bet someone sent it to her when she posted Psyche, although in her fic it is Frodo who takes Cupid's role, not Sam. That fic was so wonderful. I'll never, never forget what she did with all the wing imagery during their meetings - how they felt but, almost more, the sound of them. I would hate to be deaf if only not to be able to imagine the sound of Cupid-Frodo's wings beating or the sound of his pinion feathers rustling as they were handled. I've never read sensuality written about in a way that was at once so vivid and immediate, and yet elevated out of common experience. The stuff Igraine did with those wings was to me a stroke of genius.

Hi, again, Estë. I just wrote the post with the pics and attached it to Igraine's comment, above.

Psyche is now at WotM. In fact, it's one of Igraine's fics nominated for awards there (humorously titled and called, "Golden Mushroom Awards"). It's nominated in the category, "Best Vacation from Canon", I think. :)

Thank you, Wendy. It/he really is ravishing, isn't he? In the 1895 pink-and-orchid version, also gorgeous, the mood is quite different for me, all focussed on the lovely, lover-liness of Frodo/Cupid. In that one, Psyche looks like she's squeeing silently, saying to herself, "Oh, lucky, lucky me, to be borne away by this man of sheer, utter, unbelieavle yumminess!!!" But, in the new manip, the 1889 greeny-bluish version, she's simply fainted away. I think that's nearer what would be the truth. ;)