Hi y’all,
Welcome back to the blog! This week, I’ve got some new work on the Milton angels project, some plein air painting, and an update on collaborations. On the Milton side of things, I’m excited to share that I finally got through a finished drawing of a full-body (fallen) angel, head and all! Of course, I started with the best character in Paradise Lost: Satan.
Satan addresses the fallen legions in Hell, Paradise Lost, Book I — conte and gouache on paper
This drawing started off as an attempt to fix the problems of the last full body angel I completed. That study, done in pen and ink on much smaller paper, came out a little awkward and too obviously stitched together for my taste. Here’s a reminder of what that looked like:
The first attempt at stringing together a full-body angel — pen and ink on paper
On the first angel, I worked from the previous anatomy studies I’ve completed for the Milton angels project, but I didn’t have any overall guide to reference (other than some gestural lines I made up at random). The result was an unfortunately clunky figure, a bit cartoonish and awkward. I’m much happier with the second one. For that drawing, I combined a finished figure drawing I did at The Art Students League with my angel anatomy studies. Here’s the finished drawing I was using as a reference:
Line/Tone/Value No. 7 — Conte, pen and ink, and gouache on paper
The latest study started as an attempt to improve upon the shortcomings of the first full body angel, but, as I worked, it developed a life of its own. The staff of the figure reminded me of Satan’s spear from the beginning of Paradise Lost. The distorted head looked like a fallen angel.
So I decided to turn it into a scene near the beginning of the epic. Here, Satan and his legions have been cast out of Heaven, fallen through Chaos, and landed in Hell. Milton describes Hell as a “dungeon horrible” around which “one great furnace flamed”. However, Hell’s flames cast “[n]o light, but rather darkness visible”. To capture that, I kept some light on the top of the figure, but kept the flames on which Satan stands dark.
Milton also describes Satan as carrying a “ponderous shield” and a massive spear from the battle in Heaven. The shield is “massy, large, and round” and “[hangs] on his shoulders like the moon”, while the spear is the size of “the tallest pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills”. I had a lot of fun playing with the scale of the imagery there.
For painting these past two weeks, I took a break from Milton-related work to do some plein air. The plein air painting is still in progress, but it’s been so nice to get outside and paint when the weather’s nice. Check out the WIP below:
Inwood Hill Park, oil on canvas (WIP)
More updates there soon. And don’t forget you can get behind-the-scenes time lapse videos and process photos of this painting, the Milton illustrations, and whatever else I’m working on by subscribing to my Patreon!
I also got to spend a night painting and chatting with the very talented Kevin Shoemaker while he produced music for us in virtual reality. It was a strange and fun experience, one very apt for the (hopefully?) tail end of COVID. Check out the video of our collaboration below:
And here’s the finished version of the painting I made to Kevin’s music:
Collaborative painting with Kevin Shoemaker, oil on canvas
You can find the rest of Kevin’s virtual reality hangs, as well as some great singles from his upcoming album, on his YouTube channel. And don’t forget to stop by his website, too.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week and keep creating!