Ready... Aim...

... JOAN OF ARC IS ON FIRE. 

Joan of Arc has always been a really interesting person to me. She was just so epically tragic and badass, and maybe just the littlest bit crazy. As she awesomely should be to live on in plays, movies, statues, and pictures that I make. 

A lot of my choices are made/based on this kind of badassery, so when I had to read a play for one of the last classes of my collage career last year, my teacher nudged me towards "St. Joan". If you're feeling ambitious and want to read it, it's actually a pretty funny play about Joan of Arc by George Bernard Shaw. I was reminded of how fascinating she was and I got on kind of a Joan kick after that, which led me to watch both The Passion of Joan of Arc (beautiful) and Messenger (badass), and which concluded in this piece where I decided to make her look like some kind of fiery lipstick model... 

Colored Pencil, 10"x 12"

I know what you're thinking - "That is not how one would look while being burned at the stake! LAURA. GET IT TOGETHER. MORE BLACK." But you know what? SHUT UP. That's what. As interesting as it would have been to try and draw her charring in agony, that is just not how I roll. Instead I decided to make her all, "I know that I did right because God told me so and so this DOESN'T HURT AT ALL. Peace out."  

As a side note, this is one of those pieces where the reference photos that I had to search for would make me look like some sort of pervert if someone had to troll through my internet history or photos folder. This happens to me a lot. There is just no good clean way to make a search term for 'girl bound in ropes'. So I stopped trying. Meh.

ANYWAY, I also thought that this would be a good time to post this since THE HUNGER GAMES MOVIE COMES OUT SO, SO SOON and I keep seeing posters that look like these ones all over the city:

I. Am. So. Pumped. 

GIRL ON FIRE MEET JOAN OF ARC. You are both epic and I love you. 

Those would have been such good, clean, beautiful, helpful reference photos if they had been around when I made Joan... next time... 

EDIT: HOW COINCIDENTAL. Success.