HOME | DD

Description

Watercolour, acrylics, and ink

In hindsight, I should not have painted this on such odd-sized paper. It was too big for the scanner and the piecing-together-ing that I have had to do is super obvious and makes this look really bad...

Ahh I have been wanting to illustrate this story ever since I was a kid, who, instead of playing outside like a normal child (because let’s be honest – I didn’t have many friends growing up) I spend my breaks at the school library reading ghost stories and old folktales from around the world. I guess old habits die hard…. Nevertheless, I found a beautifully illustrated retelling of the story of Leutogi, Samoan Bat Goddess once and I just remember liking it a lot. Here it goes:

According to legend, Leutogi (sometimes also called Leutogitupaitea, but I will keep it simple and call her Leutogi) was a Samoan princess who was sent to Tonga to become the second wife of the Tongan King as part of a peace treaty between the two island kingdoms. The king’s first wife was a Tongan woman, and by her he had a son. Leutogi, on the other hand, was not able to bear the king any children. For this, the people of Tonga disapproved of her and treated her poorly.

Then, one day Leutogi found a wounded baby bat in the forest. She took pity on it and nursed back to health and cared for it as if it was her own child. However, this only made the Tongans regard her with even more ridicule. And when the king’s son suddenly became ill, she was blamed for it. For this, Leutogi was sentenced to die by fire. The king ordered her to be placed in the fork of a Fetau tree and the wood to be piled high round the tree. This was done and the fire lighted. But the bats had seen how she had cared for their kind, so when the fires were about to consume her, thousands of bats flew over the fire and extinguished it by urinating on it. Leutogi’s life was then spared. Instead, she was exiled on a desolate island, expected to starve to death. But she survived thanks to the bats who were able to bring her fruit from the other islands. Later Leutogi became revered as the Goddess of Bats. [1]

This is the closest version of the story to the one I remember reading, but there is another version in which Leutogi actually does kill the king’s child as an act of jealousy. [2]

Follow me on instagram: www.instagram.com/saxtorphillu…
For more info about commissions: fav.me/dd1rfla
My website: www.saxtorphillustration.com/

[1] books.google.co.uk/books?id=Cj…

[2] nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schola…

Description

Watercolour, acrylics, and ink

In hindsight, I should not have painted this on such odd-sized paper. It was too big for the scanner and the piecing-together-ing that I have had to do is super obvious and makes this look really bad...

Ahh I have been wanting to illustrate this story ever since I was a kid, who, instead of playing outside like a normal child (because let’s be honest – I didn’t have many friends growing up) I spend my breaks at the school library reading ghost stories and old folktales from around the world. I guess old habits die hard…. Nevertheless, I found a beautifully illustrated retelling of the story of Leutogi, Samoan Bat Goddess once and I just remember liking it a lot. Here it goes:

According to legend, Leutogi (sometimes also called Leutogitupaitea, but I will keep it simple and call her Leutogi) was a Samoan princess who was sent to Tonga to become the second wife of the Tongan King as part of a peace treaty between the two island kingdoms. The king’s first wife was a Tongan woman, and by her he had a son. Leutogi, on the other hand, was not able to bear the king any children. For this, the people of Tonga disapproved of her and treated her poorly.

Then, one day Leutogi found a wounded baby bat in the forest. She took pity on it and nursed back to health and cared for it as if it was her own child. However, this only made the Tongans regard her with even more ridicule. And when the king’s son suddenly became ill, she was blamed for it. For this, Leutogi was sentenced to die by fire. The king ordered her to be placed in the fork of a Fetau tree and the wood to be piled high round the tree. This was done and the fire lighted. But the bats had seen how she had cared for their kind, so when the fires were about to consume her, thousands of bats flew over the fire and extinguished it by urinating on it. Leutogi’s life was then spared. Instead, she was exiled on a desolate island, expected to starve to death. But she survived thanks to the bats who were able to bring her fruit from the other islands. Later Leutogi became revered as the Goddess of Bats. [1]

This is the closest version of the story to the one I remember reading, but there is another version in which Leutogi actually does kill the king’s child as an act of jealousy. [2]

Follow me on instagram: www.instagram.com/saxtorphillu…
For more info about commissions: fav.me/dd1rfla
My website: www.saxtorphillustration.com/

[1] books.google.co.uk/books?id=Cj…

[2] nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schola…