8 preliminary drawings for "The Twelve Caesars"

Julius Caesar

Augustus

Tiberius

Caligula

Claudius

Nero

Galba

Vitellius

I started working on these in January, I'm obviously missing 4 more, they happen to be the later Caesars that are definitely not as iconic as the first bunch. Maybe it was just the time of the year, but I felt really bent out of shape (which lasted 3 mos). Listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and Joy Division on vinyl didn't help. "The Twelve Caesars" by Suetonius is a really great book on ancient Rome, full of a lot of dark crazy shit. It was, also, in these preliminary drawings that I started drawing the human figure more as I do now. They were actually drawn, except for Augustus, in the order of the book. I think Caesar and Caligula being the first ones. Augustus was actually the last. I wanted them to in some way embody what I perceived, at the time, as human nature and it's relation to power, and maybe I still do. As I'm posting this I'm getting excited about the whole thing again. I'll probably try to finish up the other four drawings by the end of summer. After that I was planning to pick the top 3 and make them better.