Napoleon

 Greetings

Some time ago I posted about a coloured pencil drawing of my ball-jointed doll Yoshitsune dressed in Napoleonic kit on a motorcycle.

I have always liked the work of the painter David and recently found a picture of his famous painting 'Napoleon Crossing The Alps'.

My mind drew me a picture of Napoleon's horse replaced by a motorbike...and that set me thinking...

I have just completed this painting. It is painted and airbrushed in acrylic (A4 size).

This is called ' Napoleon Crossing The Tartarus Montes'

I am very happy with the way this has worked.

Unsurprisingly, it took quite a lot of time and patience to reproduce the figure of Napoleon (especially, as I was working much smaller than the original painting). Indeed, I  ended up using the stand  magnifying glass I usually use for small illuminations whilst working on the face.

The original painting has Napoleon wearing a bright scarlet cloak, set of marvellously by the lowering dark brownish clouds of a turbulent sky.

As I had changed the setting to Mars with a more red-based sky, I also had to change the colour of the cloak to maintain its impact.  Remembering my colour theory, I therefore picked the complementary colour, light blue.

It took quite a bit of time getting the swirls and folds to look right in the new colour.

I quickly rejected the motorcycle idea. I could have had him doing wheelie, but I decided that was a little too silly...

So, robot horse- but Steam Punk...

I am particularly pleased with the replacement of the wind-whipped tail of the original with the plume of exhaust.

I also changed the canon being lugged up the mountain in the background to a Steam Punk ray-canon.

  

Finally, David's original has Bonapart's name incised in the rock next to that of Charlamagne (Carolus Magnus). I thought that it was appropriate in the new circumstances to change the latter name to ,,, John Carter.

From concept to completion ,I think this has worked out rather well.

Until next time

Adieu