St Eustace
My recent visit to Richmond Park I was reminded of the painting of The Vision of St Eustace by Pisanello in the National Gallery, which I drew some while ago. I bought a book recently on the lives of the saints, a theme I was last obsessed with for my A-level Art project, and felt like re-visiting some of the stories. These are small sketches done from my imagination based on St Eustace. I started with dark green-blue bases as I loved the idea of a hunter moving through a dark space and the light becoming brighter as he discovers the stag. The first has a stag against the dark, as if floating. In the second the saint is moving through the dark, the stag emerging in the light. Its enjoyable working straight from my head, and finding that some of the animal shapes are fairly well implanted in my head after observational studies. The dogs that emerged aren’t from Pisanello, but I think from my previous sketches of greyhounds or whippets, creatures that find mesmerising in art and in life.
