Several years ago, I would while away the late hours on the web looking for old artwork for inspiration, as a learning exercise and also to see if I could rework and give some a new life (if it was not copyrighted). An example of this is a digitally retouched and colored version of a woodcut by Bartholomaeus, Anglicus from 1486 AD.

This wonderful scene illustrates the artist’s perception on the various life stages of man, a subject that would later be depicted in William Shakespeare’s, As You Like It – Act II, Scene VII as the “seven ages of man.”

The original black and white lines of the image are clean and crisp, almost modern in their simplicity but I felt that adding simple coloring to the scene would make it pop a little. What do you think?

~Richard