St. Paul

StPaul, originally uploaded by camille94019.

I respect St Paul. Really I do. I don't pretend to know what he looked like. This is kind of painful for me.

This was a fun project to do for Poulet. He needed some last minute illustrations for some correspondence course curriculum he was putting together. I did a little research into old icon painting styles and was a bit overwhelmed with hundreds of ways that artists over the ages have painted the same subject.

I usually have mental conflicts when I am asked to do art for christian-related things. I sit and analyze my motives and I try to "find God" and generally spend a lot of mental effort trying to manufacture spiritual art ecstasy. I generally have a hard time getting excited about this sort of thing. Usually I am afraid getting suckered into producing bad christian propaganda. This time the assignment was so cut and dried that I didn't really have to think about anything more complicated than "how did those Byzantines draw hands?" and "where do you put that damn halo?" I asked myself deep questions like "how would Aubrey Beardsley draw a beard?" I amused myself thinking about how Weird Mike might draw a Tiki St Paul. There is rich tradition of ancient spiritual art just waiting to be reappropriated and plundered.