12fp(s) - painting 17

The second of the three paintings I created at the beginning of December was from Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964).
It was actually one of the very first film stills that I had planned to paint for my Film-inspired Painting Series (way back in July/August), however I had put it off for such a long time because I always harboured strong reservations about how well the film still would translate into a painting.


The main reason for that reservation was because I loved the 60s style inherent in the film (particularly in relation to Diane Baker's character), and although I imagined her style adapting well into a portrait painting technically similar to Gil Elvgren's pin-up illustrations, I did not want to adopt that painting style for this series.

By the time December came around (at least four months after I had initially watched the film and planned to paint a still image from it), my admiration for the visual style of the film was no longer at the front of my mind and I finally felt free enough to try interpreting the style of the film into a painting.

I decided to go with quite a minimalist painting style in the hope that this would allow the fashion/style of the characters to stand out as the main focus of the image instead of the painting style/technique: This is similar to a watercolour portrait painting that I did back in 2007 and still really admire.
Just like in 2007, I think the minimalist painting style worked well for highlighting the stylish fashion of the female, however I really dislike what it has done to the portrait of Sean Connery - it just looks bizarre.

Although it's effective for highlighting the characters, I'm not too keen on the background either (although I can't think of what else would have worked better).
In the original film still the background is part of an interior shot but it looked rather ambiguous, so if I tried to literally translate that ambiguous background with paint then it would look even more abstract, which I think would detract from the subjects of the painting. Also, the original background (as seen in the film) was a brownish colour, however I felt that there was already too much orange/brown colours in the faces and that using more of those colours in the background would make the overall painting too flat and unappealing.
I therefore decided to use what I thought would be complimentary - a green colour - for the background.
I'm still in two minds about whether that was the right decision to make because in some ways the green colour is really ghastly while the bizarre shapes and tonal variations of the background don't really tell us anything; yet at the same time I can't help but feel as though the green background is exciting because it makes the audiences eyes jump constantly between the foreground and background in a never-ending duel to maintain your attention.

Despite all this though, I kinda think that for the painting to be most effective I should just cut it in two and show only Diane Baker's character - cos I think that side of the painting looks fine... (?)

12fp(s) - painting 16

When I was asked to extend my painting exhibition at the Filmhouse for an extra month (until the end of 2009), I decided to create some new Film-inspired Paintings for the display.


There were three film stills at that moment that I was particularly keen to paint, and in a flurry of creativity, I kinda ended up working on all three of them simultaneously; however the first of my three new paintings was a still from Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).
I have not yet seen the film, but I was aware of this particular still, and really liked its colourful composition of Penelope Cruz' character posing against what looks like a graffitied garage door.

The painting itself looks more like a portrait than a film still (so it doesn't seem to easily fit with the rest of my Film-inspired Painting Series), and in my opinion there are weaknesses regarding the quality of the portrait: For example the image looks rather two-dimensional, yet the texture of the paint is a bit blotchy, which I find to distract from the subject of the painting.
Despite that issue, I still enjoy this painting simply for its softness and the almost pastel-like colour palette. It doesn't try to shout out or draw attention to itself, it just sits peacefully in the background.

12fp(s) - painting 15

After two months, the exhibition of my Film-inspired Painting Series came to a close this evening, which means that I can finally upload the following painting (cos I had forgotten to scan it before putting it on display at the Filmhouse!)


This was a strange little painting that I was inspired to do at the beginning of November thanks to Halloween.
I really liked the original film still: it had a vintage aesthetic to it, and in a kind of Beauty And The Beast moment, the interaction between Frankenstein's monster and the little girl illustrates the tenderness that hides underneath his grotesque appearance.

The painting would probably have looked more appealing if painted in the same Burnt Umber [brown] colour as my Bande a Part painting, however I wanted to do something a bit different from both that painting and my Hamlet Goes Business painting (which used blue), so green seemed like an intriguing choice...

I now think the green and white aesthetic looks too cold to convey the warmth of the relationship between the two characters, however it was an interesting challenge to work on.

12fp(s) - painting 14 [SOLD]

This was the first of many 'new' Film-inspired Paintings that I created as potential replacements for any paintings that sold during my solo exhibition (which ran from November 5th 2009 until January 4th 2010) at the Filmhouse cinema in Edinburgh.

I had been fascinated by the cinematography in Jean-Luc Godard's La Mepris [Contempt] for quite some time, and there were several stills featuring Brigitte Bardot that I thought would make interesting paintings (the still below for example).

...However I wasn't keen on using those stills for this painting series because, as with Painting 2 (from Aki Kaurismäki's Shadows In Paradise), I didn't like how those kinds of stills looked more like a portrait than a still image from a film. But after a bit of time researching I eventually found a pleasant Mediterranean-based film still that had an intriguing composition vaguely similar to my North By Northwest painting, and which loosely evoked a mood similar to the paintings of Edward Hopper, who is one of my favourite painters.

This was the first painting I had done in a few weeks, and I wasn't entirely sure what kind of aesthetic I wanted to achieve with it. I was changing my mind about various aspects of the painting as I went along, and I kept rushing things unnecessarily, which is rarely a good idea.
In the end I wasn't too pleased with the quality of the finished painting, however the addition of some dark ink over Bardot's character helped to draw attention away from the blotchy background (which had been really bugging me); and I think the strong aesthetic of the source film still also helped to mitigate any other issues I had.

It may not have been one of my stronger paintings (in my opinion), but apparently you learn from every mistake...