These are just a handful of the images I have worked from. When I go about choosing an image I will often take half a dozen of these and then select the one I want to work from. When I have made that choice I then go about cropping and brightening and altering contrast in the image. You may see from these, they are very dark and so through painting I have added colour that was not in the original source material.
List of Films/Stills
Man of Steel
Lord of The Rings
Sucker Punch
Kick Ass
Watchmen
Death Note
Bad Boys
Pitch Black
Perhaps there are those more attracted to reality in film but isn’t there something more than just masks, capes and elves, the people behind these titles or costumes are people to respect.
John Butterworth states in Arty magazine (Issue 24, p.23) ” There is an essential yearning to stay young and do youthful things and it is perhaps that attracts people to nostalgia”
We will always have a fascination with the super hero and what they represent. It is the idea of someone to admire. Most of my films are either comic or fantasy. Some are more about the underdog or enforcing the law. They often depict characters in costume yet they are all people with drive and ambition to make the world a better place ; traits which we all want in ourselves. Perhaps it is a reminder that we are all just characters playing a role. “isn’t this what it’s all about, someone wiser, superior and virtous to look up to” (Butterworth. p.23.)
I took a quiet day in the studio as an opportunity to display my work. I wanted to get my paintings into a space with more natural light. They looked good in a continuous line along the wall and I repeatedly mixed up their order of sequence to see what worked best. I tried grouping them together by similar colour and by the direction of the character’s gaze. I also tried putting the female characters on the inside and male on the outside and vice versa. I think they looked good in groups of three and perhaps when I have a larger piece finished this can go in the centre.
Working from film was inevitable. It is how many of us go to escape the pressures of everyday life. We exit into a new world of fantasy where we can suspend disbelief for two hours. We invest our energy into fictional lands and characters. However at the start of this project I was not sure how or what I wanted to express. Early on my film stills were a result of pausing each film at the same time. You can see an examples of these above. I decided after a group crit that my compositions were not working and I began being more selective about the images and cropping them.
I took a visit to Cineworld in Ipswich and met up with Manager Lonni to take some photographs inside the cinema. I took photographs of the popcorn stands and inside the theatre. I find it interesting that we have all these other sounds going on such as the popping corn, pouring of drinks and the bustling of crowds before entering the screen. It is a tremendous assault on the senses as there are big bright lights and colours, loud sounds and crowds of people. I have not ruled out the option of recording these sounds and partnering them with my current paintings. The noise may add to the intensity of the character’s expressions.
I mentioned in a previous post that I would like to paint my faces on a larger scale. After prepping my metre square canvas with a pink base coat I began sourcing an image of Dr Who. David Tennant who plays the tenth Doctor offers a variety of emotions, especially of regret and remorse in the last two episodes when he is aware of his own mortality. I used an image right before the Doctor dies. The way the colour dissipates in the image appealed to me and added to the emotional undercurrent. He is shown looking up, like my other images he does not look directly at the viewer but far away at something we can only guess at.
I began painting an outline of the face before filling in the background. The yellow worked well over the pink but I have yet to decide if I will leave any areas of the base coat showing through. At the moment it has given more warmth to the painting. As I have been working on a larger scale, I have been using larger brushes in a mixture of smooth and coarse haired. In areas I have let the paint drip or scraped at the paint with palette knives at an attempt to add texture and create more expression.
In this two part story the Doctor’s arch enemy hears sounds in his head: a knocking or the beating of a time lord’s heart and the Doctor himself is told he will hear a similar sound before he meets his demise. I may try exhibiting my paintings with such sounds to give a more immersive experience.
Cindy Sherman’s work investigates identity through a diverse range of themes displayed via self -portraits in various disguises. She explored themes including fashion, cinema and gender. In 1995 The Museum of Modern Art acquired all of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills. Sherman began this series in 1977. To see these works with an introduction by curator Eva Respini click here
Having grown up as part of a generation raised on television she began to experiment with the stereotypes being represented in the media. Although the roles Sherman played were recognisable, all of her characters were purely fictional. Her compositions vary from that of an entire scene with a character that hints at a story to photographs focussing on the character alone.
The job of a film still is to promote the film therefore the still has to entice the prospective customer by providing just enough information but not too much. It must leave the audience wanting the whole story, or to know the background events to the outcome that is presented. On the other hand if the film has a popular actor then all you may need is the star actor in the Film Still and nothing else. The job of the Film Still therefore is to encapsulate a depth of information. As Arthur C. Danto says in his Essay “The girl condenses the myths that define life’s expectation in Middle American fantasy and we all know her stories”. Sherman chose characters that showed vulnerability and femininity. She depicted lost, frightened, distraught, abandoned women and yet we can also see these women to be strong and independent. “In the aggregate they touch the myth we each carry out of childhood, danger, love, security that defines the human condition” (Danto, 1998, p.14).
When looking at Cindy Sherman’s fictional film stills we can simultaneously recognise them as Clichés as well as identify elements of ourselves within them. Commenting on Sherman’s work, Rochelle Steiner (2003, p.22) states “her images imply that what we see in others and what others see in us is always and only a façade.” Despite all the make-up and costume we are reminded that we are the same underneath.
A lot of my paintings display costumed characters, using their own form of disguise yet the stories and emotions are relatable reminding us there is more than one dimension to a character.
