St. Michael fighting the devil

From The Lion & the Cardinal, St. Michael fighting the devil:

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Now here is something unlike anything I've drawn previously. This ink and gouache drawing of the St. Michael fighting the devil was commissioned by a priest of the Maryknoll Missionaries, an order with a long history of missionary activity in Japan. He asked whether I thought it possible to create an image of the archangel in the style of traditional Japanese art without the result being kitsch.

I was certainly willing to make an attempt. While inculturation is not something that I have consciously attempted in the past, I was eager to explore some of the illustrative ideas in Japanese woodblock printing. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of my favorite artists, provided most of the inspiration here.

I was also curious to see how successfully I could maintain the western iconographic traditions in the content and arrangement of religious pictures while using an eastern style of illustration.

I am pleased with the result - enough that I plan to issue a limited-edition giclee art print of the drawing soon. Please e-mail me if you are interested in purchasing one; the response will help me to decide the size of the edition.

I am also thinking about making more religious drawings in this style, showing major events in the history of Japanese Christianity - the arrival of Francis Xavier, the martyrdoms at Nagasaki, et cetera.

I also experimented for the first time with authentic gold leaf, using it for Michael's halo.