"He saw a man who was certainly Weston, to judge from his height and build and coloring and features. But the terror was that he was also unrecognizable. He did not look like a sick man: but he looked very like a dead one. The face he raised... had that terrible power of a corpse sometimes has of simply rebuffing every conceivable attitude one can adopt towards it.

"...It looked at Ransom and at last began to smile... The smile was not bitter, nor raging nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with a horrible naivete of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute had ever occurred to them. ...It did not defy goodness, it ignored it to the point of annhiliation. ...The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence." -- C.S. Lewis, from Perelandra

You know, I've been wanting to draw this face (or a face like it, since I'm nowhere near good enough) for EONS, but never managed to get it right. Finally I did, ironically enough when I was sketching a picture of Ego. (What the hell does THAT say?)



So here it is, one of my FAVORITE passages ever from anywhere. I've always loved C.S. Lewis (yes, I'm a Christian, but I also THINK! ZOMG!) and his Space Trilogy is awesomeness. Basically, the villain Weston (a thinly-veiled caricature of Cecil Rhodes) has arrived on Venus, which is in an Eden-like state, and ill-advisedly invited the 'force' guiding him into his own body. Unfortunately for him (and others) that 'force' was Satan, who goes onto try to repeat the Fall of Man all over again with the innocent Green Lady (the Eve-figure). Nightmare Fuel ensues.

I think Weston's corpse turned out well. And yes, I'll admit that it's yet another flimsy excuse to try out my newfound l337 Photoshop techniques. XP