Friday, February 06, 2009

Caravaggio


'Judith'...after Caravaggio ...©Anita Davies

I watched another of my 'Power of art dvd's' on the 1st Feb, the first in the series...Caravaggio. Bit of a thug our Caravaggio...Murderer infact!
I sat watching on the sofa with a print out of his painting 'Judith' from which I lightly sketched an outline in pencil. I then turned the printout over and set about painting with gouache to produce my interpretation of Caravaggio's masterpiece.



This was how it looked in my part of the world yesterday, here in the Fens. It's snowing again this morning, quite heavily now, repairing all those footprints we made.

11 comments:

owenswain said...

Oh, oh, the copyright police might be coming ;-) (see EDM discussion). Love the illustration. The dvds sound quite interesting. Interesting connections: this week at the life drawing session we focused on Caravaggio, playing with lighting on the model and during one of the extended poses we heard an excerpt on Caravaggio read from the book, The Secret Life of Artists; Monday I finished reading the non fiction book The Professor and the Madman a book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary which had over 10,000 contributions from an American man who was a murderer and an insane asylum inmate in England. Compelling reading.

Kate (Cathy Johnson) said...

Beautiful, Anita! I didn't know that aboug Caravaggio...

kazumiwannabe said...

Beautiful portrait. Love your page for 31 january, too, with the faces in black and white and orange background, it's great!

Joasdi said...

Caravaggio was constantly in trouble with the law and even murdered a man during a fight but it was a great artist. I love his paintings. I think that your interpretation of Caravaggio's masterpiece turned out pretty good!

Sandy said...

Just LOVELY Anita!!

Jules said...

I love Caravaggio - and this is a lovely interpretation!... (Even London has had snow settling this week!!) Your neck of trhe woods looks lovely!

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

I always knew he would get to your heart and one day we would see something of yours interpreting such a bold full of life figure. Great colours and sketch. Ive seen 4 of the series now, bit disappointed in the David because it was so full of history and hardly any artwork. The series just makes each artist and the period they lived come alive. Promise myself viewing the next one tonight. Hope you have managed with all this snow and your long pumpy lane. We've practially missed it all except over the weekend when the girls were here.

Joan Sandford-Cook said...

Nitsa - reading this through I realise it sounds that your sketch was of the great Carravaggio himself, but I love this Judy (or was it Judith). All Im waiting for is one of the artist himself, please!

Jim Bumgarner said...

Excellent work, Anita. I like the monochromatic effect.

winna said...

this looks so well done and the text was very very interesting

Margaret Ann said...

Beautiful and rich...I love the lettering melting into a border...well done:)