Jacques Louis David

In my new studio project I want there to be a visually strong element of painting. I was looking for this element to be an acrylic study of the male form. I deferred from using a figure from Ragnar Kjartanssons work, seeing as the poses in his work are intentionally nonchalant, overly so. I thus decided to look back to the great classical artists who are famous for there explorations into the human form. I started looking at Caravaggio- but was soon put off by his cliche status in the IB spectrum- at this point I looked at Jacques Louis David, a neoclassical painter who returned to the great classical beauty in art by imitating and exploring the style of Caravaggio. He did a series of full-length male nude and semi-nude studies, using the dramatic features typical of Caravaggio's art. Here is a sketch of one of these studies.