Ceramics

I decided I would experiment a bit and do some ceramic work, I have recreated a statue of zeus but used a drawing I had done of the statue as a reference point.

I tried to give the piece the same effect I had given the drawing, giving an 'unfinished' look to it.

The piece isn't as successful as I had imagined it to be, the structure of the face lacks a realistic quality to it which gives it an unprofessional appearance. for example, the cheeks, nose and eyes don't have the same strong structure that it should, also the hair and beard didn't turn out how I had imagined it , I tried to give it a thick wavy appearance but once again it didn't  work out, it instead has the appearance of clay worms. 

Myrrha an Cinyras

One of the pieces I had previously posted was one of Myrrha and Cinyras, after looking back on the image I had done, I have realised that it looked unpleasant and cluttered, the drawing of the figures look unprofessional, the paint work was poor as there is no concept of colour or tonality, the bordering looks shabby and the image is cluttered. So I decided to recreate the image in a different way,

The image is of the same concept, that Myrrha has ran into the forest after tricking her father into incestuous activities,  and the gods heard her cries to be punished, and turned her into a tree.

I believe the second image is a lot more successful than the original, the composition gives it a greater effect of a solid structure, and I have avoided cluttering the image with unnecessary items which draws focus to the main feature.

I have added certain things to give the image to give the appearance of a tree, such as the leaves at the end of the woman's hands and in her hair, and the look of roots entwined with her lower legs.

Hermes, Aphrodite and Athena

I have recreated an image of Hermes statue in pencil.

I am very pleased with the outcome of this image, I think the shading and composition give the main figure more depth, with the main figure being in the left corner and the strong lines on the right side of it, it almost borders the image and draws the eye to the detail in the shading.

I also did a sketch of my own version of Aphrodite birth rising from the sea.

and recreated a statue of Athena in the walker museum in Liverpool.

i took the photograph of the statue att this angle to try and capture the solemn look in her face and to try and capture the  complexity of different tones in the structure

David

The statue of David is one of the most renown pieces of sculptural art worldwide, next to the statue of liberty and the statue of Zeus at Olympia.

As I enjoy using sculptures as a reference to draw from I chose to use this and try to capture the expression on his face 

I also decided to paint it from another angle

Final piece

I have used the images of Matt, which I used to do the smaller paintings to create a large painting around, 6’x4’ using acrylic paints,

As I forgot to photograph my progress and have no images to show the development, but I started out by stretching up a canvas and drawing the image I had chosen of Matt to the size I wanted and added slight detail before painting the piece.  

I am extremely happy with the final outcome of the piece, I believe the choice of colours and paints was almost perfect, with the acrylic i was able to layer the colours and give several different textures and tones to certain areas of the image, for example the eyes and the beard.

with the beard using the layers to give of the affect of real hair rather than a stuck on beard, and the shading and highlight around the eyes wouldn't have the same affects.

the only part of the piece I believe could use some improvement is the mouth, every time I attempt to paint a mouth it never seems to look quite right, this is something I will attempt to improve. 

Ares

My favourite Olympian god is Ares (Mars), the god of war, and I have been thinking of a way which I could create a piece to show him for all he is. The only problem with Ares is that he is quite difficult to portray, as he isn’t very distinctive, the way most recreate him is with a helmet on, but by doing so it might be any other soldier.

I had an idea of how to portray him as more than the average soldier, I thought it may look good if the helmet he wears is part of him, an attachment to his skin, so I created an image from imagination to show this idea, however the image isn’t a very realistic. After talking to my tutors the image I had created resembled a student tutor, matt, and so I took some photographs of matt with a light in his face in a dark room to try and get some realism into to image I was going to create, I then went on to drawing, and painting some of the images. I am very pleased with the outcome and I think that this could be a way for me to some interesting pieces in the future.

Hades

The brother of Zeus and Poseidon; Hades, the lord of the underworld and everything dark,

Through the media, hades has been seen as the personification of evil, a temperamental monster, although the original stories described hades as quite a fair god. Apart from his trickery of his wife Persephone, who he obtained through abduction. Hades would only show his anger if someone where to try cheat him or escape his realm of the dead.

I used a  painting of him and personalised it and added his name in ancient Greek at the bottom of the page.

 

Myrrha and Cinyras

Throughout the stories of the ancient Greeks and there mythology, the gods have  proved themselves to be extremely petty and spiteful, a prime example of this is the story of Myrrha and Cinyras, Cinyras was a king with a beautiful daughter Myrrha, the king often boasted that his daughter was farer than the goddess of beauty herself, this angered Aphrodite, as a punishment, she gave Myrrha a desire for her father no child should have, she was cursed to fantasize about him night after night, eventually, through the help of her servant, she tricked her father into thinking she was her mother, afterward when he had realised what he had done, he banished her, as she ran into the forest, she prayed for the gods to punish her. They accepted and turned her into a tree, she was pregnant with her incestuous baby who grew inside her and was raised by nymphs, and the child’s name was Adonis.

The myrrh from a tree is Myrrha’s tears.

I recreated this story with three alternate versions of Myrrha, as a tree, with the image of a myrrh tree branches as a boarder.

Promethues' Punishment

Prometheus

The champion Titan of humanity

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Prometheus was one of the elder gods overthrown by Zeus and his fellow Olympians and managed to save his twin brother and himself of the hideous punishment his other brothers Atlas and Menoetius had received by convincing his mother to side with Zeus during the war between the titans and Olympians.

As he was known for his wisdom he was given the task to create life  on earth to end the gods boredom, so he and his brother Epimetheus had created all of the animals out of clay and had given them there survival techniques, all apart from the humans, eventually Zeus gave the humans fire, as to survive but as a thanks for this gift, they had to sacrifice the majority of their meat to the gods, but Prometheus tricked Zeus and made the humans sacrifice the unimportant parts of the meat, such as the bones, fat and skin. Once Zeus found out, he took back his gift of fire and left the humans to die, but Prometheus had grown affectionate towards to the humans and stole fire from Zeus and gave it back to men. As punishment, Zeus ordered Hephaestus the blacksmith god to forge adamantine* chains and bound Prometheus, naked to the top of the Caucasian mountains, where he could not escape, the final part of his punishment was that everyday a gargantuan eagle would rip open his stomach and eat his liver, as he is an immortal the wound would heal overnight and the bird would return the feast again.

the image of Prometheus is a popular one, and one I find interesting. so I used an image of a statue, copied the face and added it to a collage of different interpretations of the story.

image based on 

*adamantine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamant

Zeus Statue

I chose to draw an image of the a statue of Zeus' head, I found the image fascinating as the way the sculpture has carved the structures hair, and the dominance portrayed in it.

I wanted to replicate it in an image in black and grey, so I used several different types of pencil with a variety of different shades to give a diverse range of shade.
I have decided to leave the image 'unfinished' as i believe finishing it would take aways its artistic appearence.