The Red Dragon extras are on the way!
So here is the second Hannibal-themed Aromaleigh boxed set Freddie ( @tattle_crime, fourth of her name, may her flame burn bright) and I consulted on. Every now and then you find yourself saying things like "So these eyeshadows are based on the show's Red Dragon storyline, which is about a serial killer's obsession with William Blake paintings, one of which he gets tattooed on his back and eventually eats." Such is the nature of pop culture cosmetics.
(farfarawaysite.com)
(Specifically, on Richard Armitage's back. Yeah... if you didn't see season three, HOO BOY, did you miss out on some quality dragoning there.)
I'm at a disadvantage now--I'm still working through recaps for the first half of season three, so I don't have Deep Thoughts research to cite chapter and verse like I did with the Primavera box. Fortunately for me, we worked more closely with the paintings than the actual visuals of the show--I think all three of us were surprised by how yellow the show went with its yellows. (Maybe because the movie version of the tattoo was monochrome.) However, it turns out that there are a few colors from last year's (huge!) This Is My Design collection that either pick up the show's brighter reds and yellows, or fill in other shades in the paintings, so I'm including those here as well. Even better, while there will be a limited supply of Red Dragon extras, the TIMD colors are available year-round. But first, a quick thumbnail view of the paintings and new colors:
(The Great Red Dragon paintings)
(Top to bottom: 666, Leviathan, Becoming, Wrath. Plus a bit of "Awe." More on that in a bit. Then, 666 and Leviathan together, to capture the color shifts a bit better.)
Cheerfully, William Blake based all of these on imagery from the apocalyptic Book of Revelation:
- The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun ("And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered")
- The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun ("And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born")
- The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea ("And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy")
- The Number of the Beast is 666 ("Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.")
Please notice that the first two paintings have nearly identical titles which I can never remember how to distinguish; #1 is "Clothed IN Sun" and #2 is "Clothed WITH THE Sun." These were all used as season 3 episode titles:
- 3x08 "The Great Red Dragon"
- 3x09 "...And the Woman Clothed with the Sun"
- 3x10 "...And the Woman Clothed in Sun"
- 3x11 "...And the Beast from the Sea"
- 3x12: "The Number of the Beast Is 666"
With Francis Dolarhyde imagining himself as (obviously) the GREAT RED DRRRRAGON.
(all screencaps from screencapped.net)
And lo, everyone made "does Richard Armitage still have dragon sickness" jokes.
(What I love about that moment is that it lasts like maybe ten seconds. It's just kind of tossed in there right before the opening credits run, like, just another day on Empath & Cannibal, no big.)
The "Woman Clothed in Sun," meanwhile, is his love interest Reba McClane (Rutina Wesley). Again, the show went a step further than the movies and actually showed us Dolarhyde's Blakeian fantasies, with Reba emerging from the painting as the actual Woman Clothed in/with the Sun:
The final episode title, 3x13 "The Wrath of the Lamb," isn't one of the painting names--it's taken from an earlier verse in Revelation, where all the various men of the earth hide and say to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" And you will notice a lamb tucked in near the bottom of the "Number of the Beast" painting (see below). According to show dialogue, the Beast is Hannibal (unsurprisingly, because he is every single Biblical figure ever. Also: SAAATAAAN); I believe the writers/producers confirmed that the lamb with the "wrath" is Will. Indeed, in the final moments of the episode (VAGUE SPOILERS), Dolarhyde, Hannibal, and Will are by the sea, and no one is left "standing," certainly.
(If you did see the finale, take a moment with me now to recover from a fresh onslaught of the feels.)
( "He just wants to be with his mongoose!")
But let's walk through the four eyeshadows and their respective paintings now:
WRATH: Deep metallic blood red with subtle moonlight shimmer. (See "Dragon's Kiss," below, for the reasoning behind the "moonlight.")
This one works best as an accent or blending color (although if you have occasion to do a full blood-red lid, I ain't gonna stop you). In fact, I did a little Venn diagram I did on the back of my hand, where you can see what the other three look like blended with Wrath into entirely separate colors. Clockwise from the 12:00 position: 666, Leviathan + Wrath, Leviathan, Becoming + Wrath, Becoming, 666 + Wrath. Technically the Biblical line refers to the Lamb's wrath, but Dolarhyde seems plenty wrathful to me, so.
(click for full size)
BECOMING: Taupe grey with a golden glow, may have a greenish cast in certain lighting.
The overall effect is sort of an "old gold" color. While Dolarhyde speaks of his "Becoming," the formulation is meant to evoke the Woman lying on the rocks, a stony grey base, so it picks up that aspect of both the Woman paintings:
But it also picks up Dolarhyde's kimono (from a key scene where he reveals his tattoo--I think my original name suggestion was "Revelation" for that reason), which must have intentionally used the colors of the painting:
( twitter.com/bryanfuller)
(farfarawaysite.com)
The flash of gold over taupe-grey also picks up another effect of light that I've always loved on the show: Will's empathing "mind metronome," which returns in the first episode of the Red Dragon arc (3x08).
For the original This Is My Design collection, I had previously ~demanded~ a mind metronome color that we called Perception. So we get to this set, and of course I go back through my stash to see if any of the original colors blend with the new ones. Turns out, Antler Velvet (brown with copper highlight and smoky khaki undertone) and Apiary (yellow-gold with olive/cocoa undertones) blend with Becoming pretty well to recreate the painting:
You can also use Apiary, Survive (metallic orange with olivine-gold undertones), Antler Velvet, and Veneer for the Woman's other appearance:
Veneer and its aqua equivalent, Lapse, have a unique formulation in that collection: but they're kind of like sheer duochromes that don't actually have a base, just the color shift, if that makes any sense. I've worn them each as a brow highlight (with Bellissima and Gotcha, respectively), and from one angle you would hardly be able to see it at all, then I'd turn my head and you'd see this traveling flash of color. Veneer in particular is meant to look like a wash of firelight, which might go well with the dragon theme generally.
LEVIATHAN: Taupe frost with copper undertones and a shimmering blue shift.
I didn't expect the blue painting to yield my favorite color in the set, but here we are. Freddie said that she likes to think of the Beast from the Sea as the equally Biblical monster Leviathan, hence the name. (Which was miles better than my hapless "Uh, I don't know... 'From the Sea'?").
You can get the stars in the wings with Entrapment (deep blue with a copper shift--the first color on my wrist in the swatch pictures there). And there's the aforementioned Lapse--last row, first picture, you can see on the right how sheer it is at some angles. It also blends surprisingly well with the blue shift of Leviathan itself--which also blends well with Awe, the highlighter in the set (see below), if you want a softer, less blue look. This is the only combination I was able to work out IRL to my satisfaction, so I highly encourage y'all to play with the colors and see what you come up with.
We haven't actually discussed (The Name of the Beast Is) 666 yet, have we? Our last color, yet the first we came up with, the alpha and the omega--the color I gave away at Dragon Con:
666: Deep greyed blue base with a strong metallic copper shift.
This may be a good time to bring in the 666 + Wrath blend for the wings. And here's Survive working really well as the flame detail, while Wrath and Becoming pick up the bottom of the painting.
(Does... does that lamb have hands...?)
The original TIMD colors also pick up the brighter colors of the scenes from the show itself. If you specifically want to recreate the colors of the back tattoo--which are surprisingly bright compared to the paintings--I'd recommend Apiary and Tattler (metallic cinnamon red), maybe a dab of Survive mixed in, with some some black eyeliner.
For Reba Clothed In Sun, I would try Apiary, maybe foiled on the lid and blended dry up over the crease--it was formulated with olive/cocoa undertones to make it a little more wearable than a primary yellow, so it's going to pick up more of the "painting" on the sides of this shot, which Becoming also matches. A little Survive could blend in to brighten it up and get the gentle flame quality of the fabric:
Throw on a bit of Wrath as a blood-red accent for Leviathan, and I am pretty sure you could get this scene:
Yes, we intended Leviathan to match the cliff scene as well. In fact, I think the show was trying to match the painting. Because we are all terrible, terrible people.
But we're not done yet!
AWE: Buff with mauve tones and copper interference shift.
As I mentioned before, I had suggested that both the Primavera and Red Dragon sets have an extra color with a larger quantity available on the site; Luciferus was the bonus the first time around. Freddie and I had been talking about how 1) we totally gotta use "Awe" as a name for something and 2) as she pointed out, it would be great for a cheek color. "You owe me awe," as Dolarhyde demands--you can imagine the glow on someone's face, right? (The expression Dolarhyde was hoping for, rather; this is not the color of the D:< he actually tended to get.) Because I totally thought there would be a cheek color; I'd gotten confused as to which products would be in which set--there's a fourth eyeshadow in the Red Dragon box rather than a rouge or highlighter. So I pleaded for the extra RD product to be a highlighter/shadow so we could get the word "Awe" in there. I've started really getting into wearing highlighters as eyeshadow (although you could easily use a big fluffy brush and use this as a complexion highlighter or a blush), and it blends super well with my beloved Abattoir ("muted copper frost with a blue duochrome shift"):
In terms of the other Red Dragon colors, it's something you could use as a cheek/complexion color to round out your look, or as a brow highlight to blend downwards into the lid color--something closer to an actual skin tone (and it's sheer, so it's not just for pale complexions) than "smoky dark blue"; it blends particularly well with Leviathan.
On to the lip gloss!
DRAGON'S KISS: The deepest, darkest red... as blood may appear in the moonlight. Subtle spice flavor.
You know, I know every blessed episode title through 3x07, "Digestivo," by heart. Then we hit The Great Red Dragon and the Ridiculously Similar Painting Names and I just gave up. So the episode that inspired this would be--"The Number of the Beast Is 666," yes? It's The Chilton Episode. You know the one. That Scene was nicknamed "the Dragon's Kiss," hence the lip color. Because we are terrible, terrible people. And I'm particularly bad, because my first suggestion was, "I mean, I know this is kind of gothy, but... 'blood appears black in the moonlight'?" With "Moonlight" as a proposed name, because, again, I'm a terrible person. Freddie countered with "Dragon's Kiss," though, and we immediately wanted to go with that because, you know, "kiss" for a lip color. But Kristen did retain the idea of the red being incredibly dark, and put in a bit of shimmer for "moonlight." It's also a bit of an homage to the fact that (as Bryan Fuller said more than once) Standards and Practices let the show get away with murder (...as it were) as long as they used darker shades of stage blood or shot the scenes in deep shadow. So Kristen posts pictures of the lip gloss as she's packing it--
--and I'm like, yeah, that's a pretty deep red. Then my box arrives and I run straight to a mirror to see exactly how dark it is. Seriously, that is the first thing in the box that I tried on. Y'all, it actually is a blackened red. I dabbed a little on my hand, but this really does not get the darkness across:
We ended up using larger swatches I did the other night to try to get the actual darkness of the color across:
The far right edge, the darkest part? That's what it looks like on. It really is a very moody, vampy color. That said, I used the very last vestige of gloss on the brush and managed a very thin application that turned out to be a smoky midtone cinnamon, more like what you see at the very bottom of the swatch. So I was able to get it to a wearability level of "I could wear this to the grocery store," which is my litmus test for such things. That's the thing about Dragon's Kiss--it's a very unusual color, but more versatile than it looks; you can either go super-dramatic/semi-goth "I wear the blood of my enemies" with it, or you can tone it down by blotting or stretching just a metric smidge (1 smg) of it over some clear balm or gloss.
@ cleolinda: And now I'm pleasantly spice-scented.
Speaking of scent, there's one more product: the perfume from Alchimia Apothecary.
DRACONIS: Top notes: Bergamot, linden blossom. Heart: Honey, parchment, beeswax. Base: Dragon's blood, labdanum, blonde patchouli.
Dragon's blood resin is actually A Thing; to me, it's always smelled like a combination of cinnamon, cherry, and rose, and it's one of my favorite perfume notes. I've heard labdanum described as somewhere between leather and amber, and I think it's the ambery-powdery note here. The top notes are "golden" to represent the Woman Clothed in Sun in the foreground of those two paintings; the parchment is meant to represent the aged paper of the watercolor paintings themselves. On me, it was a slightly floral honey-amber with some richness from the base notes, and it makes me think more of the Woman than the Dragon (which I like). But then, my skin seems to amp honey; yours may bring out the deeper notes more.
I'm not sure if there will be any extras of the perfume available; another batch might be made, I'm not sure. There are EXTREMELY LIMITED QUANTITIES of the lip gloss, but after the massive amount of interest on Tumblr, Kristen might make a second batch (wait, breaking news--I think she definitely will?). Ah, OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: EXTRAS WILL BE ON THE SITE--Dragon's Kiss, Awe, Wrath, Becoming, Leviathan, 666; Ddraig Goch is unrelated--STARTING NOVEMBER 15, 9 AM EST. What is that, a Sunday (SUNDAY, SUNDAY!)? I'll try to post some reminders between now and then, but definitely keep an eye out for those.