Brain truly frazzled….

If I wasn’t stressed enough I defiantly am now. Saw Peter today for a tutorial  about my FMP. He didn’t like the process (painting with acrylic inks) I was using to create my images. He wants me to find a process I’m more familiar with.
After a long discussion, we came up with tattooing fruit. Obviously tattooing is my obsession (as Pete so put it), so I am familiar with the process - I’ve been doing it on people for a year and 4 months now.
What has fruit and tattooing got to do with The Demon Girl. As I have stated in previous entries, The Demon girl has strong tattoo influences throughout the book; mainly through the characters, with details of their tattooed/marked bodies.
I now plan to take my previously done illustrations, chop them up to create smaller illustrations that will fit onto a piece of fruit, so it will allow me to tattoo it permanently onto the fruits skin.
What relevance does fruit have to the book; well there aren’t any fruit trees in the grounds of the temple (human territory), so fruit is seen as a luxury and impossible to get. There is a moment in the book where one of the cleric’s comes into the classroom eating an apple and you zone into Rae’s thoughts, about how did the cleric get hold of such a rare item; a piece of fruit and that he must of done something or known someone to be able get hold of it. I do think you can tell from her thought’s how she envies the cleric, not because she wants to be a cleric (in fact she seems to be developing having little respect for clerics) but because she desires that piece of fruit.

I spent the afternoon after my tutorial researching typical meanings/symbols that fruit can represent, in order to create links between those meanings/symbols and the story.

Fruit and there common meaning/symbol.

Apple:
Temptation, Forbidden fruit/love
China: Peace, women's beauty, joy, fertility & youthfulness.
Greek: Magical, golden, believed to taste like honey.
Mythology: Eternal youth, gluttony & immortality.

Fig:
Greek: God of Wine, Drunkenness and sexual desire.
Buddhist: Enlightenment.

Pear:
China: Avoid separation, friends/lovers (Should not be divided and pears should not be divided them.)


Plum:
Chinese: Early beauty.
Buddhist: Enlightenment, absence of desire & suffering.
Asia: Young women, abundance & earth bounty.

Oranges: 
Love & marriage, “golden apple” , Strong fragrance.

Blood Oranges: 
 Death.