The Archangelic Knight

My most recent piece:

Saint Michael the Archangel
5" x 7"
Oil on clay ground.

There's nothing particularly original about it. The format was sort of inspired by Pieter Brueghel's Fall of the Rebel Angels. Brueghel is one of my favorite painters. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was listening to The Book of the New Sun as I painted it, and I like to think that that came through a bit in the colors.

I'm hoping to sell it somewhere around here once I get tired of sitting back and admiring it. Saint Michael was a popular subject in the old Spanish days; one often encounters images like this in mission churches across the Southwest, which I'm fond of visiting.

For my next project I'm doing a big watercolor piece that's supposed to look like a groovy wrap-around mass-market book cover from the seventies. Whether it will actually be used for its intended purpose remains to be seen. But hopefully it'll at least be nice to look at as a painting.

Here's an initial sketch for the front:

It recalls certain Ballantine covers, but I've also been looking a lot at the Art Nouveau designs of Alphonse Mucha. The negative space will be filled out by mosses, critters, and swirls, of course. My plan is to use watercolor, like I said, though I suppose inks were used on the Ballantine covers. It's an experiment, so we'll see how it goes!

"O see not ye yon narrow road,
  So thick beset wi thorns and briers?
  That is the path of righteousness,
  Tho after it but few enquires. 

"And see not ye that braid braid road,
  That lies across yon lillie leven?
  That is the path of wickedness,
  Tho some call it the road to heaven. 

"And see not ye that bonny road,
  Which winds about the fernie brae?
  That is the road to fair Elfland,
  Where you and I this night maun gae."

—  "Thomas the Rymer"