Sistine Chapel Version of the O.K. Corral Fight

November 23, 2011

Went home for lunch and actually got my lunch on the sketches I was working on (yes, that's bar-b-q sauce stains in the sky).

This is a poach from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel creation scene. Only here we have the birth of the O.K. Corral legend which sent Arizona's fame "swirling to the frontier skies in clouds of six-shooter smoke."

Meanwhile, for the opening spread of the centennial piece I want to extend this metaphor to the birth of Arizona, building on gunfighters in the clouds and Apaches running through the Grand Canyon at the bottom chased by Spanish conquistadors and red camels with skeletons on their backs.

Studying Michelangelo's prep drawings I came up with these figures I want to plant at the bottom in the shadows of the canyon:

Very ambitious, even for me. Going to have to execute it this weekend. Going to need some luck, although I love what the Prairie Home Companion Dude has to say about it:

"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known."
—Garrison Keillor