Influences part 20: Zina Saunders

The latest post over on the Lines & Colours blog highlights the new issue of Illo magazine and features a sample of work by four illustrators; but Zina Saunders was the featured artist that immediately caught my attention.


I would describe Saunders' style as having a loosely realist drawing style mixed with a controlled Expressionist colouring scheme. Although this is a contrast to my usual art preferences, Saunders makes it work to great effect, which really captivated me and inspired me to do some further research on it beyond the Lines and Colours blog post.
It states on Saunders website that she has been a writer/illustrator for over 15 years, and as well as general illustrations she also does political satire, woodcut-inspired works, and 'reportage illustration' that fuses her illustrations with her interviews and other writings.

Saying as I only just found Saunders work earlier today I don't know whether I'd call her an influence right now [note that this blog post is called Influences...], but I certainly have a great admiration for the work featured on her website, and I can also sense a vague similarity between some of her works and my current painting series (mainly the realism and my keen interest in colour) - so why not include her here?

I like the realism used on the key areas in each of her works (such as the faces), and although I'm not so keen on the loose/vibrant line work used in other parts of her works (like bits of the background - see image below), for me it is the Expressionist colouring that dominates the image and grabs attention (because I love colour!)


I can't tell yet whether the work of Zina Saunders will have any notable influence on my work in the future, but hopefully it will help me to loosen my strong grasp on realism - as is noticeable in my current painting series 12fp(s).

12fp(s) - painting 8 [SOLD]

I think it's time I change subject matter because these paintings just seem to be getting less and less appealing.

After yesterdays painting when I couldn't stick to a specific painting style to use, I made the decision with this painting to just make it quite loose from the very beginning.


The washy non-specific background works quite well, but because this style offers nothing to focus on, it puts the viewers entire attention onto the foreground characters. Although that is what I wanted to happen, the foreground characters lack detail (or any other point of interest), so the whole image is just a hazy/watery blur with nothing to maintain the viewers attention.

This painting seems to be also lacking depth. Originally the background was very pale, which reflected the source image, but it wasn't working as a painting so I put a darker wash over the background. I was unsure whether it would work, but after a few hours away from working on the painting I can now see that the darker background has improved the image - however I think it could be darker still...

Another thing that I've tried in order to compensate for the lack of depth in this painting is to again (like in Painting 3), digitally blur the background in order to decrease the depth of focus. This has successfully broken up the painting to help improve the depth, but while it is quite intriguing I don't think it is entirely convincing...

12fp(s) - painting 7

I'm not happy with this one:


It was a bad drawing to begin with, and then once I was painting it I couldn't decide what to do with the brushstrokes, which has made the whole image a bit of a mess...
I should either have made the whole thing quite controlled and 'realist' so that the painting looks conventionally decent, or I should have gone with my instincts and let the brushstrokes run wild so that the image is more Impressionistic and interesting; but instead of doing either of those I've just got this monotonous painting that is kinda poor in all elements.

12fp(s) - the series so far...

I'm struggling to find more interesting film stills on the Internet for me to paint, so after doing 6 (out of the 12 planned paintings) here's a photo showing the series so far:

Did you notice that I've removed one painting?

I'm pleasantly surprised with how nicely the paintings go together, but I had to remove my second painting because it looks nothing like a film still (it is much more like a portrait painting), so it seemed completely out of place when placed amongst this series.
Although removing that painting now means that I've only done 5 paintings and need to try finding another 7 film stills to paint, I do have a couple of possible alternatives from previous years if I can't find enough to fill the series...

There's this painting of Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation, which I used to illustrate the introductory blog post that outlined my plans for this series:

And there is also this painting from March 2008, which shows Ken Stott portraying Tony Hancock in a British television programme from that time:
(OK, it's not strictly speaking a "film still", but the painting does seem to fit-in with this series).

Neither of these paintings would be ideal for this series (because again they seem more like portraits), but what's the alternative?
I seem to have spent days on Google Images looking for adequate stills, but I keep coming back to the same bunch of films.
I haven't even been able to find a good image from any of the 22 James Bond films!
What films am I forgetting to look for???