About the Illustration- This pandemic appeared during the mid 14th century, and it succeeded in wiping out the scores of people and destroyed entire civilizations, especially in Europe, which is significantly affected their culture. Of course, art took place during this time. Artists used their artistic potential to capture this event and to fight this enemy in their way. The themes of skeletons, death, and the Dance of Death were very common. While there were variations in the style of storytelling, some of them were very dark humor while others were expressive and so one. All of these things inspired me to create my miniature. I decided to free my mind and creativity; thus, I chose the fantasy approach by embodying this virus and power of it. So I went back to the core of this disease to find out the main cause to help me create my character. I found that many people believe that this disease caused by bacteria called Yersinia pestis. This bacteria is found mainly in rodents, particularly rats. Based on the research I did, I started to visualize my idea. First, I divided the artboard into three sections to create hierarchy in the illustration. The top is guiding you to the middle of the artboard where the main character is, and finally, the bottom where the victims were surrounding the lower part of the main character. As I mentioned before, I want to create a character to represent the disease. I determined to build up my character with a dark and evil personality. I used the power of the body language and facial expressions to show that. Then I added curvy lines coming out from the main character's hands extended to the end of the artboard to show the unstoppable power of the black death. Then I added the secondary characters under the main characters' cape surrounded by small rats that are 3coming out from the main character. In this part of the illustration, I aimed to form despair, suffering, and sadness by mirroring people's personal experiences with death. I depicted some actions during this time; doctors were giving the sick people fatal doses of opium to kill them before they spread the
disease, friends and families lose each other, some people die and suffer alone, and how people try to help each other.
Moreover, to make people relate to the scene, I added to some characters the plague's mask and the side effects of the disease on people's skins (Bumps and black limbs). Furthermore, because the epidemic emerged in a time of strong religiosity and superstition, I inspired my drawing style by the old manuscript illustrations. Still, I made it less detailed to make it look like a modern miniature, while the color scheme was inspired by the ancient plagues' paintings.
