A harsh flash-photography close-up portrait of an elegant ***** moth demi-human with warm brown skin, enormous glossy black eyes, a tiny rounded nose, full lips, and a beautifully severe heart-shaped face. Two long delicate antennae emerge from her hairline, disappearing into a cloud of thick dark curls dusted with subtle pale scales. Her wings are folded tightly behind her, patterned in muted cream, rust, and smoky violet.
She is standing inside the narrow hallway of an extravagant but slightly run-down SJL apartment building, surrounded by peeling floral wallpaper, brass mailboxes, stained carpeting, old framed advertisements, exposed pipes, and someone’s shoes abandoned outside an apartment door. She wears a fitted deep-violet dress with an exaggerated collar, sheer stockings, pointed black shoes, and several pieces of tarnished gold jewelry. A tiny purse shaped like a beetle hangs from one wrist.
The expression isn’t posed. It feels like she has just opened her apartment door and discovered somebody taking a photograph in the hallway. Harsh camera flash illuminates the powdery texture of her wings and catches thousands of tiny reflective scales across her hair and shoulders.
Expressive painterly brushwork, shape-based rendering, economical detail, large shadow masses, visible paint marks, objects suggested rather than fully rendered, imperfect facial structure, real person rather than model, portrait of an effortlessly glamorous neighborhood fixture in Saint Jude’s Landing.
