see that dark one walking there/see the moon caught in her hair/she’s a ghost among your men/she’s a dark one understand
Portrait of Selene Shields, the Dark Moon • graphite pencil • 12″x9″ smooth bristol board • February 2017
I started this in February, which is Black History Month, and I’m posting it here in March, which is Women’s History Month. Both subjects are pertinent to Selene, who is both. I’ve long wanted to do a sister-portrait to “Woman of Thunder” but was lacking the right visual inspiration for Selene. That came to me while writing one of the recent Driving Arcana stories, where there was a lot of lunar imagery and it occurred to me that a fun visual play could be done with a face side-lit by a full moon—in essence created two crescents. The fact that the moon itself does not shine, but only reflects the sunlight cast upon it, was also influential. People forget that the moon is also a dark one, but even in darkness we feel her pull.
You can see Selene in action in Driving Arcana, available in paperback and ebook from Heliopause. Prints available here!
call her a beast, call her a villain, she’ll find a way to settle the score/she sits in the dark, her finger on the trigger/don’t doubt her blood’s redder than yours
