#Janelle Feng

[robespierrchik]

art: Janelle feng

[alonelycandleflame]

Suddenly realized that I had this sitting in my files and forgot to repost these beauties. Vampire Robespierre and Human Saint Just commission from the amazing @janellefeng ! Please go show her work some love! 💖

[princepsfianna]

Obsession over a random art project.

So I recently saw this video and am quite literally obsessed with it. I've re watched it like twenty times and can't get the ideas it's planted out my head. It's just such a fantastic work of art! I love the French revolution and Robespierre more specifically. The French Revolution and it's consequences, really it's just too early to say but they are positive! I'd encourage everyone to watch this because God damn it is just so good. It does kinda contain existential themes and quite a bit of depressive thoughts as themes throughout though so be warned. As I oft do I wrote a not great poem based on revering Robespierre because I've nothing better to do at this ungodly hour.

"Oh, Robespierre, surely it's a lie! Surely, it is a lie that you can die? Robespierre, what glory is your name? And how high is it along your fame?

Alas, it's been some two thirty years, Since I saw the brave, Robespierre! (idk if they rhyme lol) His bold eyes with hope was gleaming, Yet now all we see are tears streaming.

His life on this land, alas it's over But not yet is done the carryover What glory and what sorrow, Is his name, sung till morrow

And though they tell us, That they brought nought but guts, That their cause was a failure! We know that he was but a saviour!

Glory, Glory! Robespierre, Glory, Glory! Robespierre! Death, Death! To traitors, And a curse upon the invaders.

--

Our forefathers who drowned, In their own blood against the hound. Now we, their sons, shall do as them! Till from Esk till Tay, we fufill their dream!

We, the children of Scota and Brighid, Strong shall we be, never more pitied. Faithful to revolution, armed agianst the hun So we might deserve the Saltire when it's done!

So long as we have boyhoods flame, Then we shall never forget our name, Scottish lads, long broken are they Shall arise, true and tall from the fray!

So that from Éire till Cathay, We yet might see on that day. Shining, republics of virtue Gleaming from here and far too!" The little "--" shows the exact moment I switched from praising Robespierre to focusing on the scottish context and lads like Thomas Muir and the United Scotsmen. Muir, I love Thomas Miur like one would not believe. he was in my opinion the first man to revive the Scottish nation after it's usurpation with the acts of union as a truly national and not religious or royalist motivation. Glory, Thomas Muir for his land lives and shall be a republic from as I said Esk till Tay.

We have achieved a great duty in these critical times. After the destruction of so many years, we have been the first to revive the spirit of our country and give it a National Existence.

Thomas muir, 1798/99

Follow thee, follow thee, wha wadna follow thee? Charlie, Charlie! Wha wadna follow thee? Long have ye lov'd us, an' trusted us fairly! King O' the Hi'land hearts, Bonnie Prince Charlie! 1820s/30s-ish.

[derrick2004]

Heyo fellow nerds!✨

It's that time of the day where I need to rant about my favorite things and this time is my latest d&d's character turn

His name is Immanuel Richter and I don't know what else to say besides the fact that this marksman is my best boy. I've been absolutely DELIGHTED to play him as a squeamish, 19th century upper class librarian whose ego is only rivaled by his total lack of social skills

When in our starting session the tavern ended up being assaulted by specters, and him immediately getting strangled by one while screaming like a little girl and ending up from the grand total of 8 to -1 hp, I knew he was by FAR the most relatable character I've ever played

All rights to the art goes to Janelle Feng and lemoncholy on YouTube

[guanuji]

trying to color better 😬 

[sansculottides]

Maximilien Robespierre was executed on July 28, 1794, or the 10th of Thermidor in the Republican Calendar. A conventional textbook may mark the end of the French Revolution with Napoleon’s coup in 1799. But Ralph Korngold, Marxist historian, wrote:

“No one man creates a revolution or carries it on, but the currents of revolution may sometimes range themselves in such a manner that the fate of one man becomes the fate of the revolution itself. ‘We did not realize,’ said Cambon, ‘that in killing Robespierre we would kill the Republic.” (From Robespierre and the Fourth Estate–the “fourth estate” here referring to the budding proletarian class of the time. Korngold gave particular attention to Robespierre’s role in the attempt to enact the Ventôse Decrees, the most revolutionary laws proposed during the Republic which would have expropriated the wealth of counter-revolutionaries to be redistributed to the propertyless.)

Napoleon’s ascent ten years after the start of the Revolution only marked the final stab in a Republic that was already good as dead. The death of Robespierre and his allies was the death of the Revolution’s radical aspirations, and allowed the propertied men to fully take charge. Though I also appreciate the sentiment that we can also mark the Revolution’s end a bit after Robespierre, with the death of Babeuf, the “proto-communist."

Anyway, what I really wanted to do was talk about a phenomenal short film that came out this year (on Robespierre’s birthday), “La mort de Robespierre” by smileyfaceorg/Janelle Feng (who has done so much amazing art about Robespierre and the French Revolution).

The film focuses on the night before 10 Thermidor, before Robespierre’s forceful arrest. This historical episode has been depicted before, in various ways. In the 1989 movie La Revolution Francaise, Robespierre had gone insane at this point, an interpretation that fed off of years of black propaganda. In Feng’s film, Robespierre is depressed, remorseful and self-loathing, an interpretation that does have its footing in historical record. In the months leading up to his arrest, Robespierre was frequently sick from the mental exhaustion of running and defending the Republic.

Mental health isn’t a new thing, though we have admittedly only recently begun to be articulate on the subject. Mental health amongst revolutionaries isn’t new either. Even Lenin died of sickness likely compounded by the stress of protecting the Revolution’s gains. In the 1871 Paris Commune, the commune council was “a working, not a parliamentary body [but] executive and legislative at the same time,” which allowed members to fully dedicate themselves to the cause of building a socialist future, but also burdened them with a punishing workload with little room for rest, and the mental exhaustion that naturally follows. I’m sure every person in any radical movement knows the weight of the struggle, but that’s one reason why it must be a collective effort.

At one point in the film Saint-Just looks at the 1793 Declaration of Rights on the wall and comments “To think we made that.” It’s another historically-rooted moment, as there was at least one eyewitness account claiming he did something like that on that night. I think the presence of the 1793 Declaration also ties the film in with the radical tradition of interpreting the Revolution. The ‘93 Declaration was more egalitarian than the initial 1789 Declaration, signed off by a pressured Louis XVI and also the one more textbooks would remember.

I love the use of comic elements too. Comic devices in film would make me think of stuff like Spiderverse or Scott Pilgrim where it’s fun and wacky, but in this film Feng uses comic devices to contract and expand space and time to an introspective yet claustrophobic effect. Especially the scenes where panels surrounded by negative space hint at Robespierre’s inner turmoil. It works really well; comic elements can work like poetry, after all.

I love stuff like this, art that is rooted in history (with quite scholarly rigor) while also aiming to go beyond academic scholarship. You can’t quite explore things like emotions and human experience the same way you can through art. Art like this film looks at historical facts and tries to fill in the gaps. How did they feel about this, what kind of effect did it have? And it explores how these historical people and episodes were human. More importantly, it does so with empathy and purpose, keeping in the “spirit” of the historical figures depicted. If you truly read Robespierre, you wouldn’t give in to lazy portrayals of a mad dictator. In contrast, Feng’s short film shows so much care and attention for this person in the past.

I’m so happy that someone like Feng is making art about the French Revolution. Most of the films, novels, games, etc that come out about the French Rev usually just follow the boring, very liberal and mainstream narratives, and calumnies about Robespierre being a dictator or various other kinds of monsters (not true). Korngold wrote about this too: “The Red Terror appears unpardonable to the Whites, and the White Terror to the Reds. Carlyle penetrates closely to the truth when he says that the reason the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution has received so much scathing comment, is mainly because it was directed against the privileged classes and their followers and not against ‘the voiceless millions.’”

Like the rest of history, our interpretation of the French Revolution exposes the undercurrents of ideology, conscious or not. Our ideas of who should be in power, who should be listened to. Ultimately, it did end as a revolution of the budding bourgeoisie, but before that defeat, there were revolutionaries who imagined and fought for a new future for all. Not just a political revolution, but a social and economic one. We should remember their revolutionary example. There is a reason, after all, why the Soviets held the likes of Robespierre, Saint-Just and Marat in high regard.

[smollrobin]

Style Inspiration

Notes:

Looking at textures (marker, digital pencil), contrast of block shapes and thin lines, multi-screen/comic panel layouts, realistic vs. unrealistic colours for visual interest/appeal, use of negative space, environment detail — balance between heavy detail and simple indications of an environment with blocks of colour, feeling of digital+traditional aspects, cinematic lighting to direct the eye to a subject/focus, low contrast vs. high contrast, shape language; use of angles.

Artists:

Lemoncholy (YouTube) / Michelle Cheng

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Concept Art

SmileyFaceOrg (YouTube) / Janelle Feng

@/grambell_ (Instagram)

@/SD2190392804 (Twitter)

[lorealparis1789]

tHANK YOU. it may be some misplaced polish patriotism but however hagiographic the danton movie was, bogusław linda's saint-just is my favourite saint-just.

but he's evil and gay-coded! yes, so am i, next question.

but he gives robespierre flowers and asks him to take over france together! yes, and free speech is his constitutional right.

linda is one of the most iconic polish actors but personally i believe that his career would have been even brighter if he had method-acted saint-just and kept his hair like that. and his clothes too. he's my favourite sj actor bc he served looks sue me

can we go back to a time when men were men?? (looked exactly like linda's saint-just?? all of them???)

im gonna be working on yaoi requests very soon since i've got a massive art block, so in the meantime a few sketches from when I watched danton (1983)

also maybe unpopular opinion boguslaw linda SERVED looks. the way I was folded the entire movie

[ivlymonii]

havent posted in a bit. me wanna die. me can't draw. developed an obsession with robespierre thanks to janelle feng's work.

yay

anyways there is a very laggy rin penrose stream running in the bg as a write this my god.

[theotherwesley]

Watching Janelle Feng's latest masterpiece and A) I have never felt less normal about a thing, and B) a fire is lit under me to work on my comics, but instead i must toil. Unreasonable.

[robespierrchik]

it's like tears

art: Janelle feng

[pgabachelorarfa2023ppolito]

5 Important Pieces:

Pieces in order:

Fersisca Sibylla- Rogier Van Der Weyden

Robespierre- Janelle Feng

Washing Day- Hanabushi (name unknown)

The Hallucinogenic Toreador- Salvador Dali

Thetis Character Design (Song of Achilles)- Michelle Cheng

[danikoshi-doodles]

This was drawn after I got the sudden urge to 'stalk' Janelle Feng's Instagram ough

[mi604meganseeney]

Artist Inspiration- Janelle Feng

[captain-will]

The first thing that comes to mind are the really cool frev animations by Janelle Feng on YouTube

Does anyone know any animated scenes where it's like a council type thing? Similar to the council of piltover in arcane

[exlporingexandrianclothing]

SOOOO hello!

HINUMAY HERE!

Several months ago I embarked on a journey... or rather a brain rot on the Whitestone Rifle Corps, made several notes, read all I could find on the wiki page, and decided to study and try to design their attire, uniform, or clothing. I figured.... there's also the Whitestone Pale Guard and the Grey Hunt... there's so much to explore... and i had just resigned from my job at that time and i had time to develop my art style more.. so I had to choose one of these factions to explore first and I decided to do the Whitestone Pale guard.

my initial thoughts on how to bring this to fruition and find a story in it are when I first discovered Lemoncholy's video about Maximillian Robespierre, and I was just soooo inspired by that, both Lemoncholy and Janelle Feng's work is sooooooooo inspiring and so good! so i figured i wanted to make a youtube video out of it.

and gosh it has been going on for several months and i still couldn't work it out mainly due to my poor scriptwriting and not really having a clear direction to take and also like having new design ideas every couple of weeks, trying them out and feeling like its not enough xD,

BUT I have a lot of previous designs and I've continued to develop on them, and that's the reason why I created this blog so that i can compile all of them and share them with you guys because i need to organize my thoughts about this as well...

and these are my very first designs!! don't worry it gets better T_T

i also have some character background concepts and stuff