These sketches are from summer 2007 when I was road-tripping in Italy with Chad and his parents. We had an RV and we drove around the whole country from Milan to Sicily for almost two months. It was fantastic. I got to see everything I had studied in Art History 101 in my first year of art school.In the upper left corner and bottom right corner of the sketches you can read Venice 2007 and Florence 2007. That's where I was when I made these. You can see that I was heavily influenced by the religious iconography, which dominated Italian Renaissance art. Honestly, it was all about Jesus and the Virgin. Frankly, it kind of got a bit monotonous after about 300 paintings and  four dozen cathedrals or so, but it was inspirational too. Throughout history people have produced some breathtakingly beautiful things in the name of the invisible man who lives in the sky and controls the world. I find it awe-inspiring and deeply disturbing at the same time. Religion makes no sense to me.So, obviously I've had the whole halo and religious reference project on my mind for quite some time. It's good to be finally working on it.