St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima

This is another class project for my Basic Drawing class. We were tasked on finding an image in an art history book and then doing a copy or rendition of that painting. The catch, it has to have prominent human figures. Well I actually have a "Saints in Art" book that I had gotten at the Chicago Art Institute to help with my iconography, and decided to stick with my theme in this picture. So this is St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima by Lodovico Carracci and Italian artist who painted the original in 1612. Seen here -->  commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…
Interesting story about this work, it was commissioned for a chapel located at the sight where Sebastian's body was discovered by Saint Lucina. The chapel noted to have quite dim lighting, hence why in the original painting, Sebastian's body is considerably lighter than the rest of the men gathered. However, the painting never was given and the artist kept it till his death.

In my rendition, I decided to take a more illustrative approach, giving a bit more expression to the faces and using a different line quality, there are a few changes I made in this piece, including: Pronouncing the halo around the saint's head, having the soldier in the background looking at the audience instead of the middle distance, and removing the blotchy and almost fuzzy figures of the guards in the right hand with trees. 

I highly recommend checking out the painting, and hearing the full distinction here by professional art critics  
-->www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvVzVI…