Analysing the Composition in Two Paintings

Ivan the Terrible And His Son Ivan - Ilya Repin

Source: 

http://faculty.risd.edu/evarshav/RepinIvanGrozny&HisSon.jpg

This painting, whether intentional or not seems to use the 'The Cross' composition, the top half, or the back or the room is very dark while the bottom of the image, at the front of the room is very well lit with very striking red no-less, the contras is quite extreme; there is almost no light in the top half and almost no shadow in the bottom half.

Splitting the image in half vertically is Ivan the Terrible and his Son injured in his arms, the composition serves to aim attention direct to the urgent scenario happening right in the centre, they are almost framed in a diamond shape too.

Here I just drew lines showing the cross and the surrounding diamond, I also used red arrows to illustrate how the use of this composition forces the viewers attention on Ivan and Ivan in the middle.

Moby Dick - Jon Foster

Source:

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTuQyffjEDD2EGM1wynn8bzgFr_IwhHUFJE1Com6HXclG0Wwgo6pw&t=1

This painting also uses 'the cross' composition technique, but in a less forceful way, it seems like it's used mostly to break up the painting the way the lighting changed from the top half of the painting to the bottom is very unnatural and stylised, The horizontal break in this painting is very subtle where-as the vertical line is extremely obvious, the figure stands tall and straight right through the middle of the image, but the horizontal line is created by the harpoon, the rope as it wraps near near the middle and serves almost to guide your eyes up and down the image.

Again I just marked on the cross, and I also noticed that the diamond shape was present again, it could be a recurring feature of paintings that follow 'the cross' composition, I also marked in red where I thought that the cross and diamond led the eyes when initially viewing the painting.

Final/Environment Image

My final image is sort of an environment art, it shows the Barbary pirates in a British style ship (with the red flag) infiltrating the British in order to raid their ships.

Szalja Model Sheet

Finished my model, sheet, he should have a rat companion but I didn't include it here, not much to say really, just got to move on and get everything else finished.

Synopsis

Britain has a peace treaty with North Africa preventing pirates from the area raiding their ships, but on the 21^st of October 1805, Szalja Bouzid and a crew of Barbary pirates would use the impending Battle of Trafalgar as a distraction to raid British ships hopefully unnoticed.

While travelling amongst with the British on their way to Cape Trafalgar they experience an unexpected hull breach and are forced to take refuge on a nearby island, while on the island they meet a woman with jet-black skin and hair, she claims to be a witch, she tips them off to a cave just north-east of their location. The cave contains three chests full of Spanish gold, guarded by three small men, each with eyes larger than the last. Szalja must distract the men in order to take the money, using a golden spoon given to him by the witch, she would let him keep all of the gold that he could hold on the condition that he give her the one silver coin in the largest chest.

Of course, Szalja is a pirate, he never returns to the witch’s island. Upon rubbing the silver coin he finds that he can summon one of the small men on command. He uses his newly acquired friends to search the British ships while they are busy, to find out which one holds the most valuable loot, he acquires a target, he discovers that the Captain of that ship is holding a very valuable necklace, an equally valuable ring and a particularly important looking sword. By the time Szalja finds a way to steal these items, the witch had already begun to put an end to his scheme, she had presently made an deal with the ship’s Captain, telling him that Szalja had lots of Spanish gold and one Silver coin, that if he could return the silver coin, he is free to keep all the gold that he can find.

Szalja obliterates the Captain and his entire crew with the help of his own, after stealing the necklace, the ring and the Captains ornamental sword, he returns to the witch’s island, and ends her life with her late-friend, the Captain’s cutlass. 

Model Sheet Progress.

This first image was originally supposed to go along with the Model Sheet as a thee-quarter view but when I actually started my front-view, I changed a few things that I was unhappy about.

Here is the front view of the actual model sheet, a few things have been changed, most importantly I think, the turban, I felt that the original turban was a little unrealistic and too stylised for what I was going for, I removed the bow and arrow and instead gave him a sword although it is rather small at the moment, I may need to change that, I forgot his rat companion, but he will still be included.

Turban decoration

Playing around with the idea of adding some decoration to the turban, since I forgot the feather from the iteration design I kind of like it but I'll wait until I have the whole three quarter view finished before I decided for sure whether to keep it.

Soldier Bust (Sort Of)

I'm just updating with a bust of my soldier character, I say it's 'sort of' a bust because it wasn't drawn to be a bust, the rest of the body is yet to come, I just decided to go into some detail on the face, and thought it would be nice to have a large version of just the face, I didn't change a lot, I changed some colours, but mostly just stuck with the exact design I had at the iteration stage but in more detail, I did get rid of the lower lip, I liked the way it added character, kind of gave him an attitude, but I removed in the end because I just didn't like how it fundamentally looked.

Might have to tweak the eyebrows, they look like they are in kind of odd angles, but other than that I'm pretty happy with this.

Thumbnail Variation.

One of my main problems with the second environment thumbnail was the colours, so I decided to just redo that one using only value and see if I feel differently about it this time, I do like it a lot more, I think I still favour the third over this, abut all I need to do is just think about it now.
My only concern now is if the environment painting won't actually show enough actual environment, they're all more like establishing shots.

I'm going to throw this map in here too, I did it just after finishing the thumbnail and I didn't really want to dedicate a whole post to it alone. It just shows the course of the Barbary ship (red) from when they originally attempt to rob the British Fleet, to being called onto a different mission by the witch (I haven't decided what the witch actually will be yet, but she lives on a little cabin on a small island as illustrated on the map) perhaps she calls the Barbarys over to her island somehow, but that seems a little unrealistic given the context, so maybe t's more likely the Barbary ship had to hide-out there, or they had to fix something.

Iteration variations.

A couple more iterations, variations of a previous iteration, I wanted to take my last and take it in too different directions, a kind of scruffy evil pirate version and a 'professional' captain version, I kind of knew which one I would prefer from the start, 1 is my favourite. There are elements left-over, and a couple that I added just now though that I don't like, but I've pretty much decided that I am going to go in a linear path from here, this is my guy, I am just going to tweak it somewhat before I move on to the model sheet, I guess I'm ready to start on a character sheet if I feel like it, but I may as well wait until I start my model sheet.

Environment Thumbnails

I had been meaning to get these done for a while now, and I had a lecture on composition today which I found extremely useful as composition and adding depth to a painting has been something I've always had a bit of difficulty with, I wanted to try out some of the composition techniques so I thought I would hit two birds with one stone.

1 is kind of just a generic Battle of Trafalgar scene, but I gave the Barbary pirate ship a coloured sail to make it stand out from the rest, the idea with this one was really just to show the Barbary's infiltrating during the battle.

2 is my favourite, it is the Barbary pirate ship approaching an island after the battle of Trafalgar after being tipped off by the witch, I just think it is the most compositionally interesting one of the three, it also has a kind of sense of mystery, what is in that cave? what is causing the green glow? it kind of tells a story, more successfully than the other two anyway.

3 I kind of tried to play around with a more stylised and colourful colour scheme on this one, it shows the soldier looking over the ship at the island, at a cave that the witch sent him to, I don't really like it, the colour-scheme doesn't really work, and the composition falls behind '2'.

Larger version of my chosen Thumbnail.

These are a couple of rough iterations based on my silhouettes, I've decided to just go with a really rough sketchy drawing style at the moment, just to kind of get across the basic ideas of what types of clothing The Soldier will wear, colours and such. 

I quite like 2, despite it being based on one of my least favourite silhouettes, 1 is kind of an unrealistic design, but it was kind of just a quick over the top version of a potential design; the way the cloth wraps around him is obviously highly impractical.