This the second painting I did. The reason I call this "Ancient Rome 2" is because I am going to have
one before it that represents an earlier period in Roman history in which I will include biblical figures
(I'm going to keep with the same time period divisions as the drawings).
In general, I'm not real happy with how this came out, but this time period is very limited as far as
costume design goes. Pretty much all they wore back then were togas. To that end, I tried to concentrate
on doing a good job on the soldiers, faces and details in the food and drinks in the foreground.
You'll notice this one isn't set up with a bar, like a majority of my other pictures. The main reason for
this is that they didn't really have bar setups like that back then. I did a lot of research on the
culture and architecture of the Roman empire and found that most houses or places where parties were
thrown were set up like the following illustration:
Often, wealthier Roman citizens would have a convivium or dinner party, with musicians, dancers and servants
bringing drinks and food. Strangely enough, they all ate and drank in a reclining position. Attempting
to set this up in the format of a bar pic was a challenge. I took a lot of artistic liberties with this one.
I had to make the vantage point of the viewer
as if they were looking through a solid wall (like the red and blue back wall in the above illustration).
Setting up the foreground was awkward.
I wanted some detail in the foreground but not overwhelm it with just food and a giant table, so I put two
smaller tables on either side of the center one.
To be accurate, I could have made the left wall go all the way to the ceiling but that would have made
that whole area empty and boring. I also want it to tie in with the painting that's going to be placed to the
left of it.
