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. 

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.