Friday, June 23, 2006

First pastel -1/2 done






So here I'm trying out my pastels for the first time in the stairwell of my dorm. Well, sometimes you just have to work with what you've got.

Anyway, it's about St. Anthony the founder of Christian monastacism. Summarized nicely by Wikipedia: he lived in a tomb in the desert, closing the door on himself and depending on some local villagers who brought him food. When the devil perceived his ascetic life and his intense worship, he was envious and beat him mercilessly, leaving him unconscious. When his friends from the local village came to visit him and found him in this condition, they carried him to a church.
After he recovered, he made a second effort and went back to the desert, further out, to a mountain by the Nile, called Pispir, now Der el Memun, opposite Arsinoƫ in the Fayyum. There he lived strictly enclosed in an old abandoned Roman fort for some twenty years. According to Athanasius, the devil again resumed his war against Saint Anthony, only this time the phantoms were in the form of wild beasts, wolves, lions, snakes and scorpions. They appeared as if they were about to attack him or cut him into pieces. But the Saint would laugh at them scornfully and say, "If any of you have any authority over me, only one would have been sufficient to fight me." At his saying this, they disappeared as though in smoke, and God gave him the victory over the devil.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

gorgeous! (is that your dinner i see sitting on the stairs in the first photo? lol.)

i love the colors in this one... it's just so beautiful.