August 12, 2010

Caravaggio stuff

Here's the latest straight out of my sketchbook that I'm doing for the Sketchbook Project 2011.  I picked this up on a quick bike ride last Saturday evening at the base of an evergreen near Bethel Park high school, and drew it from life the next evening or so.  Trying to get back to sketching with oil paint soon!

Recently I finished reading a biography of one of my favorite oil painters, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. “Caravaggio, A Life” by Helen Langdon.  Not a super entertaining read. The assessment of the paintings, and the background stories attached to them were my favorite parts of course. So few facts are known about the details of Caravaggio’s life that I imagine it would be tough to make any read about him really engaging.  Which is why I LOVE the book Simon Schama did called “The Power of Art”.  The section he did on Caravaggio was both entertaining and informative.  I’ve read it many times.  I’ve also found a ­­fantastic web site devoted to all of Caravaggio’s works. Caravaggio.com.  It is packed with all kinds of historical information, super nice quality images of his paintings, and even the entire full-length documentary from Simon Schama’s “Power of Art” DVD!  The book mentioned above is a companion to the DVD box set.  If you have time, check it out.

That’s it for today!