Macbeth
This week I decided to start a painting based on Roman Polanski’s Macbeth.
I decided to choose this subject for painting, because Macbeth is a fantastic example of a film that has aspects of the sublime. Hopefully this will come across in my work as I am looking at the sublime for my dissertation.
I started off painting the background, and quickly found that painting large areas, even using one colour, can be very time consuming.
After painting the background, I started on the crown, and found that it wasn’t a gold colour as I expected, but was green, and red instead. Thankfully I looked closely before starting to paint. From now on i’m going to make sure to analyse the colour of every single thing I paint before putting brush to canvas.
I then started painting the hair, and found that this part was quite fun. I tried painting it in the style of Tamara Del Lempicka , and found that the more I painted the beard the more my own style started to come out.
After I painted Macbeth’s hair, I started painting his armour. Yet again I found that the colour actually present in the image wasn’t what I expected. I found that the metal actually acted like a mirror, reflecting the blue of the sky, and so I started painting it blue. I also found that in a certain part of the reflection there was quite a distinctive red hue, so I decided to put that in as well.
I then added the green cloth, and the red detailing on the front of the armour. I found that these parts really made the painting feel a lot more finished.
I will work on the skin next week, which is going to be interesting, as the face can either make the painting, or ruin it, if painted incorrectly.
Joe Teather
