After more than a month of planning and working, I have finally finished the Bull of Heaven! This painting is 32 x 24.5 inches and was completed on masonite board with acrylic, crackle paste, modeling paste and satin varnish.
I wanted to make a painting that would reflect the elements of line and texture, along with the design principles of variety, rhythm and directional force.
I woke up on January 19th with the Wall of Ishtar and Epic of Gilgamesh on my mind. I immediately pulled my Detroit Institute of Arts book off the shelf and turned to its page on the Snake-Dragon. I have actually visited this piece many times, and (I can't help but admit) even touched it. Babylonian mythology has captured my imagination ever since I first read the Epic of Gilgamesh during my junior year of high school, and later on, Anne Rice's The Servant of the Bones. The Wall of Ishtar, once one of the Wonders of the World, is made from terracotta, lapis lazuili and precious stones. It is decorated with dragons to honor the god Marduk, bulls for the god Adad and lions for the goddess Ishtar.
I thought about how the Bull of Heaven is slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu. This act plummets Enkidu to his death, and Gilgamesh to absolute mental anguish, as he obsesses over the loss of his closest friend and his own quest for immortality.
I drew this preliminary sketch:
I added two more sketches:
The figures you see in the last sketch are the cuneiform figures for Bull of Heaven. I wanted to include these in my painting, but this ultimately didn't work out.
After I had my plan, I prepared my masonite and coated it with lots of modeling paste and an entire jar of crackle paste. I used my palette knives and a panel from household blinds to help me construct my bricks:
I decided, upon my colleague's prodding, to build a 3D relief of my bull on top of my bricks before painting. The trouble was getting my enlarged bull sketch transferred onto the bricks without having to begin the sketch all over again. I tried using homemade transfer paper. This did not work, because the texture was just too bumpy to draw on smoothly.
So, I cut out the bull and traced around it with pencil.
I then put modeling paste over my outline and used my palette knives and toothpicks to etch in the fine details.
It was time to start painting! I started with my bricks. I wanted each brick to be completely unique. My color palette for the main bricks consisted of ultramarine blue, light aqua, neutral gray, Payne's gray, white, quinacridone nickel gold, gold, bronze, bronze yellow and copper.
For the bricks at the base, I used raw sienna, bronze yellow, yellow oxide, mars black and white. I finished the project with three coats of satin varnish.
A tremendous effort went into this piece, and it was all worth it. I enjoyed using line, variety, rhythm, texture and directional force to revisit the Epic of Gilgamesh.
