The Seventh Knight

The past few years I have filled my "creative time" with various design projects, comic books, class preparations, teaching, illustrations and work initiated by a second Master's degree.  Needless to say, my painting hours are few and far between.  It is still my first love, creatively speaking, so the time I am able to paint is golden.

This past fall (2014) I was commissioned to paint a "knight" for a central Mississippi company.  I've enjoyed working with this collector in the past and enjoyed discussing the potential symbolism, color and tone of the commission.  I started by collecting reference material from around the studio (I do have several, small knight statuettes laying around) and acquired a book showing armor & weapons throughout history.

After doing the preliminary work, I started sketching and decided on the following composition:

Using the sketch, I drew out the figure onto the 36x48 inch canvas and began blocking it in with oil paint and large brushes.

Below is the finished product after the detail work with smaller brushes.  I ultimately decided to go with gold flourishes based off of 16th century "parade armor" from Belgium.