Roman Portraits

The Greek and Italian (maritally roman) people have coexisted almost symmetrically, from art to religion, the so I have used images I have found of roman portraiture sculptures.
I then used several of them to draw in my own way as a study on the similarities of the two cultures.

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.

 

Medusa

Using an image I found online I have created a collage of the mythical creature/woman Medusa, the snake haired gorgon, but changing it slightly to suit my style.

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

Icarus

Icarus was the son of the master craftsmen Daedalus, who constructed his son a pair of wings from feathers and wax to escape from Crete, he then instructed him not to fly to close to the sun as the wax would melt, Icarus ignored this warning and his wings melted and he fell into the sea and drowned, the is now named after him, the Icarian sea.

I decided to carry on using the collage technique but in a different way then I am used to, by using the different coloured paper I have been able to use a variety of shades and tones and using white pencil to create my image. 

I have incorporated the sun faintly into the background of the image and i have also added the island of Crete at the bottom of the page

Island of Crete

other artist have depicted the story in different mediums such as painting and sculpture;

'The Fall of Icarus', 17th century, Musée Antoine Vivene

Draper Herbert James: Mourning for Icarus