Rage of Achilles (Painting as of Sept. 17, 2025)

Here is my painting as it looked on Sept. 17, 2025.    I was getting this ready for the "Homer" event at Porter Mill,  paintings inspired by the Iliad and the Odyssey.  This painting is going to be part of a  series of paintings with literary-themes, something that happened by chance because over the last year or so,  I have participated in a number of shows with literary themes:  "Moby Dick",  "Alice in Wonderland",  "Scarlet Letter" and  a "Midsummer Night's Dream," and now Homer's "Iliad".

This painting represents the shield of Achilles, but instead of decorating it with fantastical images (as Homer describes it in his poem),  I am decorating it with words,  the opening line of Homer's "Iliad,"  as translated by Robert Fagles.:

"Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls." 

On Sept. 17th, I continued to work on the outline of the shield, trying to get the lines of the circle right.  I also began to clean up the corners of the canvas, to get them ready for the background color.  I made a lot of very small changes to the lines of the spiral and to the lettering. Perhaps attention to these details seems too much, but I think that the simpler the design, the more important these little corrections are. This painting was getting close to what I wanted to see, but there were still some things to do. . .