I have always been fascinated by vampires.
Not just by the elegant figure who lives in a castle, wears an excessively theatrical cape, and turns every dinner into a medical-legal emergency. What draws me most is what the vampire represents: desire, fear, loneliness, hunger, and the unsettling idea that a creature might remain forever suspended between life and death.
For this painting, I decided not to depict a human vampire. I wanted to return to something more primal: the bat, the animal I believed to be at the origin of the myth, before we gave it a seductive face and a property portfolio in Transylvania.
Searching for the Creature
I began with several sketches of bats in flight. Their anatomy is magnificent, but unforgiving: one badly articulated wing and the creature immediately looks like an umbrella going through an existential crisis.
I wanted an almost symmetrical composition, with the wings spread wide. This symmetry gives the animal something sacred, like a distorted religious icon. But I did not want it to be perfectly balanced. The wings remain slightly different, damaged, and irregular, because living things are never perfectly symmetrical—especially when they have clearly been drinking something they should not have.
I placed the bat in the center, fairly low in the image, leaving a large expanse of empty space above it. That emptiness is essential. It creates the impression that the night is swallowing the creature while building tension around the small crescent moon. Against the bat, the moon seems tiny, almost fragile.
Building the Night
I first covered the canvas with several very dark layers made from black, deep blue, and a small amount of cold green. Using black alone would have flattened the image. I wanted the darkness to retain a sense of depth, as though something might still be moving behind the surface.
I then worked the background in irregular passages, sometimes with a broad brush and sometimes with a cloth. Certain areas were wiped away and painted again. This accumulation creates an imperfect, slightly misty night rather than a simple flat field of color.
The ground was built with thicker, fragmented marks. I added cold grays, browns, and a few bluish reflections to suggest wet stones. I did not want to define the location too precisely. It could be a cave, a shoreline, or a much less advisable inner landscape.
Painting the Wings
The wings were the slowest part.
I established their main shapes in almost-black grays, then drew the joints with lighter lines. I used a relatively dry brush to create a scratched, fibrous, worn texture. The membranes needed to appear thin and translucent, yet strong enough to carry the creature.
I added a few touches of very cold white along the edges. They suggest moonlight striking the wings, although the light itself feels almost supernatural. I deliberately allowed certain areas to disappear into the background: the bat does not emerge completely from the darkness. It belongs to it.
Around the head, I added much lighter fur. The contrast immediately draws the eye toward the face. The ears almost resemble two horns, blurring the line between a real animal, a vampire, and a small demonic figure with appalling manners.
The Red
The red came last.
I knew from the beginning that it would be present, but I wanted to avoid introducing it too early. A color that powerful can quickly take control of an entire painting. I therefore completed most of the blacks, grays, and whites before adding the first red layers.
The red begins at the mouth, descends beneath the creature, and spreads into the water. I built it through several passages, some transparent and others more opaque. The splashes and filaments were added with a fine brush, then partially softened so they would resemble both blood and a form of luminous energy.
The reflection in the water was particularly important. It extends the creature downward, as if a second presence were living beneath the surface. Vampires are not normally reflected in mirrors, but I have never heard of any restrictions involving ominous pools of water.
Why the Vampire Always Returns
The vampire changes with every era. It can be a monster, an aristocrat, a lover, a parasite, or a victim of its own immortality. That is probably why I keep returning to this image: it allows us to speak about what we desire while pretending to speak about what frightens us.
In this painting, the vampire is neither romantic nor human. It has been reduced to hunger, movement, and night. Yet I do not find it entirely repulsive. There is something vulnerable in that small body suspended between enormous wings, as though monstrosity were simply a spectacular way of surviving.
Perhaps that is what I love most about vampires: they transform their wounds into mythology.
Some people go to therapy. Others become immortal creatures condemned to drink blood beneath a crescent moon.
We all have our methods.