Judith and her Maidservant

The painting done for Art History in my Traditional Media course 8D I was recreating the piece "Judith and her Maidservant" by Artemisia Gentileschi. This piece took me literally 40 hours or so, from February 15th-March 10th... and I'm pretty proud of it.

The entire image was painted in sepia. Fun fact: our class ran out of our shade of sepia so there is a reason why the maid's dress is slightly grayer XD

Artemisia Gentileschi. Born July 1593... she was one of the most prominent painters of the Early Baroque time. She was born to Orazio Gentileschi, also an accomplished painter. She surpassed her brothers in artistic ability, and her father decided to train her.

However, when Artemisia Gentileschi was 18, one of the friends of her father who he hired to tutor her--Agostino Tassi--had cornered her. He proceeded to rape her and blackmail her into more sexual favours until she finally told her father, and won the subsequent 7-month trial. During the trial she had been tortured physically with the idea that "no one can lie under physical torture" and her reputation was forever stained.

Artemisia Gentileschi picked her life up and remarried, becoming a successful painter and friends of many influential people--The Duke and Granduchess of Medici, Galileo Galilei, and Michaelangelo's nephew, among others--and she managed to be the first woman accepted into the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing) in Florence, Italy. Her paintings often depict women who have suffered (usually in biblical stories), triumphing or surpassing their tormentors. I do love her art, a lot.

The reference:

"Judith and her Maidservant" 1614. Oil on Canvas. It is said that the woman with the sword, Judith, is a self-portrait, and the head of Holofernes is modeled after Tassi, the man who sexually assaulted her.

We had done grid sketches to blow up the sizes of our studies... this is the transfer of the sketch with conte onto a primed canvas. The clothing folds killed me...

The following process below are parts of the painting as I finished them...

After this, I did not have many reference photos... it's sad but my mother lent our camera to a friend and I mostly have littered bits of progress taken with my ipod camera...

Comparing the maid's original conte sketch with final product

Details of sword and cloth... Did these with two fine, size 3 brushes :D

Head and head details :)

Comparing my printout reference with the painting... The hair isn't done yet in this photo :D

The final product... it's so hard to take a good photo of this...

Lots of painting! Lots of work! And lots of satisfaction 8) this looks great in my livingroom, haha!

Kids these days

The Ensemble as Children.

Expect lots of angsty angst angst because I love torturing the Ensemble, adding flavor to their lives... the least angsty are probably Yoshua, Colleen and Skye haha XD

The dragons

Two nights ago, I had a strange dream.

I was running with the Ensemble. I think I was Colleen. Maybe it was that I'd been thinking about her for her birthday, but I was her, and I was flying while being buffeted by the wind. I was killing dragons.

Maddie kept screaming something. In my dreams I see her a lot, screaming always, pointing and warning me of danger ahead. Silver was hitting the dragon, Skye was dancing below it with daggers in her hands; I don't know where Valor and Aidan were. And Yoshua would not be there; he had refused to hunt them with us.

I think Lale was there, but not wholly.

He doesn't exist in my dreams where there is a lot of light.

These dragons were not good. Ethically, they were not good. They were not sentient; they did not think. They were cruel and unjust and fought for the sake of fighting, killed for the sake of killing. I was flying and panting and there was so much sunlight in these marble-pillared ruins that I felt ill. But I kept fighting them amidst blue sky, white clouds, and crumbling rocks. There was nothing in my hands; I commanded my friends below.

Somewhere after we killed a red-scaled, slithering dragon, it writhed and shot a beam of fire. I saw Lale then, just a dark shadow, slicing it's belly open, but I saw a claw come down to crush him, so I shouted. The shout tore the dragon's talons in two.

I felt something extremely heavy slam into my side. I careened and tumbled forward and was flung into darkness.