I painted these oracles over the course of a few lunch breaks.

They weren’t intended as oracles at the start, rather simple anatomy practice.

I had recently come across a massive folder, filled with anatomy reference, naked people in all sorts of positions. I can’t even remember when I saved the whole lot on my hard drive.

No, it was not my porn stash. These were naked people in respectable, artsy poses.

I thought “hey, it’s almost my lunch break, this is the Universe telling me something, I should probably practice some anatomy today”.
I started drawing the first naked woman (the one in the middle), but for some reason I was struggling with her eyes, so I left them blank for a while.

Because the best way to face a problem is to think about it later, right?

Long story short, I ended up liking her that way, and I thought “this could be a seer or something, which is pretty cool. But the main thing is that I’m done with that eyes issue”.
I gave her a weird head gear, because that’s how oracles roll.
I added some clothes, because I couldn’t think of any logical reason why a seer would walk the Earth wearing just a funny hat.

Still, I had already spent some bloody long time painting her entire body, and it would have been a pity to cover her up completely.
So I kept the half-undressed look (or half-dressed? Gosh, which is the optimistic view here?), somehow recalling iconic images of Sybils and ancient female oracles.

Just guessing. It’s not like I did any research on the matter this time.

I painted the women on either sides during a couple of other sessions, and then I went back over all of them adding ornaments and weird symbols to tie them together.
I think that helped them look more as part of “an Order”.

The Order of the Three Oracles, maybe?

Like, there always have to be three of them. The rite of passage consists in being blinded by a spitting snake or something like that.

Each one of them will give you just one part of a prophecy, but you never know whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end.

Also, they have to be fit. That’s crucial.

Either way, here are some close ups.

What have we learned today?

Not much, probably.

Apart from “if you can’t be bothered to draw eyes on specific women, turn them into blind, attractive, half naked oracles”.

By Paolo Puggioni