This painting titled "My Journey with Bacchus" is a self-portrait of the artist's journey over three years exploring classical art techniques. It combines elements of Renaissance, Baroque, and traditional art styles with personal symbolism. The artist studied the works of masters like Caravaggio and techniques like glazing layers of oil paint. They recreated Bacchus/Dionysus as a goddess and included ancient symbols and their astrological sign of Gemini represented by stars on the face. The complex work involved many studies, references, and an evolving process as the artist experimented with techniques and composition using principles like the golden ratio.

1. My Journey with Bacchus
This painting is a journey of more than three years, It is the combination of traditional art, the history of my city, my first self portrait,
personal experiments, and different stages of my life and art career.

2. Introduction
This piece is the start of my classical art approach Also a research for traditional art & old methods and an implementation
of the great masters techniques.
I chose Caravaggio's Famous painting of Bacchus ( Dionysus / god of wine )
I wanted my version of Bacchus to be different, not only by changing the composition. I decided to paint a goddess of wine.
Inspirations and work challenges:
Renaissance and Baroque paintings have always been of interest to me, in particular their methods of forming compositions,
complex studies and encoded ideas within the work that reflected their beliefs and their way of thinking so I used similar techniques
and researched several methods used in that era, that resulted in advancing to my Knowledge not only in the history of art, but also
in the chemical nature of the oil paints and mediums,
Learned about new techniques and how can light penetrates painting layers to the very first layer if you mastered glazing technique

3. I started in 2017, the first lines were in black and white. I was not
satisfied with the result. I remade the composition studies, and
took some new pictures closer to the vision I had in mind, as you
can see in the next two pages.

4. I used Photoshop to clarify some ideas, but when it came to the lighting and cinematic Barouque affect I relied
on my imagination, because in all the reference pictures the lighting was bad, and wasn’t unified this was one of
the most challenging work process
I wanted to make some changes and add personal meanings, such as
the ancient symbol of Air and the Gemini constellation will
be assembled like little stars on the face .
The star of Pollux which stand for the biggest and most shiny star
in the Gemini horoscope will be where I sign my name
Initially, I wanted to find a model for my project, it would much easer to set everything and just focus on
painting, Nevertheless, that option was not available for me, I decided to draw myself.
When I first designed my signature I chose Pollux as a sobriquet
and wrote it in phoenician alphabet upside down.

5. Studies and Composition
I've recreated the composition of the painting, using Golden Ratio, Hexagram, Ancient Symbolism and encrypted shapes.
I used oil paints and a mixture of oil
mediums, over the time I did a
combination of experiments in
classical school techniques such
as the Caravaggio’s, Da Vinci’s,
The Flemish, and my own approaches

6. Work process and the change process over time
2017 2018 2020

7. The Eyes
At this stage I was working on
the first Eye
I engraved and shaped the eye
iris as the same real anatomy of
a real one, I wanted the look to
resemble the real eye, and by
applying transparent oil layers,
it would be affected by the
light and the changing
of the angle of illumination in a
way that resembles the eye lens
in reality.

9. Bacchus Crown Inspirations

10. Textures Inspirations

11. New Painting Zayed Vision
It is a work under process that I started working on it in Nov 2020
140 x 120 cm oil on canvas

12. Colour Inspirations

13. Studies

14. Reference Pictures

15. Work Process