The moment I read Lucian’s description of the vine women, I knew I had to try and draw them. The way these women are described is confusing and a bit terrifying to imagine. The women are apparently perfectly formed from the thigh up, with a thick base of vines. The images Lucian conjures up is extremely vivid, but also vague enough to allow a great deal of interpretation. I imagined in my interpretation that these women were fully made of twisted grape vines while still being recognizably women.
I also thought that as some of the women speak different languages when greeting the sailors that it might imply that they are different varieties of grape vines as well. This lead me down a rabbit hole of looking for different kinds of wine grapes and seeing how different each of there vine structures were. As it turns out grape vines look pretty similar across types, but the color, shape, and vibrancy of the fruit varies greatly. Lucian also describes the women as the source of the wine river I believe, so I thought that wine could be flowing from the thicker trunk of the women. With some women having red wine flowing and others white, If I had brought my paint set from home I could more properly convey this.
