Prince-Bishop Von Waldeck v2 (WIP)

A further work-in-progress on my portrait of the Prince-Bishop who put down the Muenster Rebellion. As you can see, there have been changes. The sharpened stakes went away but may come back, perhaps with severed heads on them. Franz is now waist-deep in dead heretics, which I think is how he likes it. I’m not sold on the big black area at the top on the picture; I may change that. Originally I was going to add clouds and lightning to it… now I may do something else… but what? I’m also unhappy with the hilt of the sword — which is pretty ahistorical and looks more like something that belongs in a Conan the Barbarian movie. Isn’t it strange that I can draw all this weird bullshit but in this picture the shape of the sword hilt sticks in my craw? I think it’s because this drawing is heavily based on an actual portrait of Von Waldeck… and since it actually looks kind of like him, I want it to be right. In the original, his mitre (the hat) looks just like that… which kind of cracks me up. It looks like a ‘party hat’ mitre that is too small for his head and is probably held on with an elastic band.