Fortitude

So, over the past couple of weeks I've been working on a piece of work for a group project, based on an old tapestry called 'The Triumph of Fortitude'. The tapestry is full of classical and biblical heroes; it's basically the A team of myths and legends, and so the thing that interested me the most were the stories behind each of the characters. 

After doing a bit of research into the characters that could be identified, I started to narrow them down to the characters or stories that I thought had the strongest visual potential, or were easier to encapsulate in just one image. I had a few ideas for different characters, and had I had more time (or managed the time I had better!) I would have like to have done a set of maybe 3 images. 

However, my finished image (shown above) surrounds the story of Eleazar who was crushed to death after stabbing a war elephant in 162BC. I tried to keep the colours neutral and just bring in some textures and pattern in certain areas. I think I could improve it in terms of balance; I think it looks a little bit top heavy, and I think if I had better digital skills I could improve the quality of the scanned elements, but overall I'm happy with the final image.


So, I've posted my image above, as well as a couple of shots of my sketchbook, and more updates will be on their way shortly, enjoy......

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