There’s this painting, a Caravaggio called The Denial of St. Peter, that hangs on a wall in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I’ve been a fan of it for years, seeing it in textbooks and art history tomes. As impressive as it is on those printed pages, it’s something else altogether in person.
The way Peter’s face looks like it’s about to fall apart, the way he has three fingers pointing at him (one for each denial), the This Is The Guy look on the woman’s face, the way it all sits in the inky shadows with little flecks of fire light…
It’s my favorite, safe to say. So much so that I’ve decided to take a crack at it for myself.
It’s probably not the smartest thing in the world to do, trying to emulate Caravaggio, so I’m not going for pure emulation. After all, I’m an illustrator. A cartoonist.
If you’ve been to my place in the last few months, you’ve seen it sitting there on the table, progressing very slowly.
That’s partly because I don’t really know what I’m doing (using watercolors to copy a Caravaggio? And ink? With gouache? Lunacy!), but also because I’m working , concurrently, on the final episode of Shamgar.
Ya’ll know the Shamgar series, yes? A couple of Philistines sit around talking about this and that when suddenly Shamgar pops up to end them. Well, this time he bites off even more than HE can chew.
Everything that has a beginning has an end, even Shamgar.
See you next Monday.
Think this is amazing wonderful brilliant – so the question has to be asked if you sell your art , prints, books . Hope this is not rude to ask but this St. Peter is wow…
There are few books for sale on the BOOKS page. I should put together a book of illustrations…
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but
after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up.
Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just
wanted to say excellent blog!