Drawings of Caravvagio paintings

After seeing the Caravaggio and His Times Exhibit in Rome last week I did some rough-ish drawings of some of his paintings in conte crayon. The man certainly could draw very well in the manner of his day. That did not make him unusual as an artist for that time. Rather it was his perfecting the dramatic use of lighting in his paintings.

caravaggio boy bitten
From Boy Bitten by Lizard
lute  sm
from The Musicians
caravaggio figures
St Francis of Assissi in Ecstasy
caravaggio bachus
From Bacchus

Torrents: Book cover ideas

I recently was asked to do a book cover for a small publisher by the author who is a fan of my Music series of pen and ink drawings. These drawings are done at the Palau de la Musica in Valencia while in the audience. The lights are dimmed and typically we sit in the balcony where the sound is best. It is a fair distance from the musicians. So between the low light and the distance, I can not see the drawing I am making and the musicians are a bit on the fuzzy side, the faces and hand in particular being particularly small. Thus the results, which I do not see until the lights come up, are unpredictable and totally spontaneous. These are circumstances that are hard if not impossible to duplicate without renting the auditorium. In addition the author had a particular figure in mind and probably would not want half of him to be represented by a blind swipe with my water brush and be missing other body parts and the gesture altogether. So I had to mimic my own art under normal lighting and distance circumstances yet maintain major aspects of the figure in the photo she sent. It was a challenge, frustrating at times, but in the end she got a drawing she liked and thought would work well for her.

Here are my first versions, which is similar to the final one but which has far more detail in the background than the latter, which only has 3 shafts of light. I did not realize how stark she wanted it to be. It gives the figure so little context. But it was what she had in wind.

christian book cover 1
This figure is a bit fatter than the author wanted
christian book cover 3
I like the face on this one a bit better, about as much as the one on the final.

Both of these drawings are available for purchase.  

Portrait of a Teenage Girl

Sold Acrylics on paper, 60 x 80 cm

I did this portrait following as closely as I could Rembrandt’s approach to portrait painting.   However he used oil paints and I use acrylics.  Blending with acrylics is problematic as they dry so quickly so you have to paint afresh where planes join, although retarders help.  His models were in person whereas I use photos, as do most of us given the hours and hours it takes to paint a portrait.  Some do a combination of a sitting during which they take photos and work from them later.  In the British national portrait competition they had a model  and all the artists worked from photos while the sitter could move around freely and talk to the interviewer.  Not all photos are professionally done so the lighting is not easy to deal with, as was the case with the photo I used here.  The subject was in a snow scene, cheeks red here and there from the cold and hardly any shadows from the diffuse lighting.   

Picard

Patrick Stewart has aged, making for interesting challenges for an artist, so I took it on.

 

Patrick Stewart b. 1940  an English actor, director and producer. He started as a Shakespearean actor before going to television and film. He has been nominated for multiple awards. He is one of my favorite actors. I watched some episodes of Picard just to see him do the part. It was otherwise a not series I found particularly interesting. The popup control panels were astonishing.

Patrick Stewart, Conte Crayon (sold) on Canson paper