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.

Some (Kind of) Iterations.

I took one of my silhouettes and from that I created a few ideas of the head and head-wear would look in more detail, also starting to look at colour.

In the first two, although I kind of wanted him to have a mysterious look to him, I think he looks a bit too 'silent' most likely due to his mouth being completely covered (I don't really like '2' at all actually), I tried another variation, staying true to the silhouette but having his entire face visible.

At the moment I'm kind of working in a simple line-arty art-style  just to get the general idea of how he will look, as I feel more comfortable playing around and changing things using lines rather than painting, once I have a more clear idea, I will probably create a more detailed painting.

Analysing the Lighting in Two Paintings.

 Thomas Eakins - The Gross Clinic 

Source:

http://www.newyorkartworld.com/images-reviews/aeakins/TheGrossClinic-329x400.jpg

This is a painting titled The Gross Clinic by the artist Thomas Eakins, he uses light to successfully create a very intense atmosphere, by placing the surgeons in a spotlight and having very little light around the rest of the room, the light seems to be coming from multiple directions but all directed at the surgeons, this seems to be the case because the standing man has a highlight on his forehead, meaning there is definitely some light coming from the top left of the composition, but the man on man on the right's jacket is also fairly well lit from the back, which would indicate multiple light sources.

The audience seem to be unaffected by the multiple spot lights that light the surgeons, I say this because the entire crowd are being lit from the viewers left and the light diffuses the further to the right of the painting, I would say that this is caused by a window letting in a very small amount of light or dim light on the wall to the left.

Hsin-Yao Tseng - San Francisco

Source:

http://funstuffcafe.com/img/creative-art/hsin/hsin02.jpg  

This painting is a painting named San Francisco by Hsin-Yao Tseng. In this painting while it is still quite a dark scene, there is clear natural sun but the light is a lot more diffused. the ground however, because it is wet, is highly reflective and is reflecting light clearly and almost mirror-like, there is quite a bit of atmospheric diffusion in the sky caused by fog, the buildings in the distance are very unclear, because the light is being diffused and scattered by the fog, as a result, by the time the light reaches the 'lens' it looks very blurry and desaturated.

The buildings are fairly well lit most likely by bounded sun light affected by dynamic occlusion, this is most clearly evident on the building closest on the right of the image, it get a lot darker towards the bottom of the wall, and the lighting on the street, the car lights and street lights for example. Since the surface of the road isn't completely flat, the reflection of the lights in the water seems stretched out [1]. The buildings don't reflect a lot of light, so despite the wet road's reflective properties, they still create a dark shadow.

[1] Diagram of the reflection of the car lights on the roads uneven surface.

Sheet Nine

These are my final 3 silhouettes, of the three, the third is definitely my favourite, I kind of like the first but it looks too much like the guards from Aladdin, the middle one just looks like a wizard or something, and is generally pretty boring.

I'm going to start iterations now, I'll chose about 3 of my favourite silhouettes and start adding details and colour.

Barbary Pirate Reference

Source:

1 http://jumamshabazi.webs.com/mulai%20ismaiel%20moorish%20king%20were%20muliano%20(moo-lee)%20comes%20from.jpg

2 http://www.cindyvallar.com/Barbarycorsair.jpg

3 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Barbarossa_Hayreddin_Pasha.jpg

4 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Mola_Pirata.jpg

5 http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/a-barbary-pirate-captain-ca-1800-everett.jpg

6 http://www.veltd.net/valmin/imgvalmin_10/images/9886.jpg

Source:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_033.jpg

This was just a painting I found on the Wikipedia page that I liked, it could be helpful, I like the clothing of the people in this painting and the colours, I like how the reds and light blues could contrast with the Battle of Trafalgar paintings that I found, in a video game setting this would be great and player character would really stand out.

Considering a Setting and Synopsis

While doing some research on pirates in the early 19th century, I was pretty pleased to find that there were Pirates who operated in North Africa, dubbed 'Barbary Pirates', I was happy to find this, since I didn't want to have my Soldier be a typical western idea of a Pirate: Jolly roger, Pirate hat and a parrot on his shoulder, now that I am going to soon start moving on from the silhouette stage it's important that I have a more specific idea of how the pirate will look, so I will specifically be looking at the aesthetics of the Barbary Pirates.

Funny coincidence, one of the reference images I mentioned seeing of pirates in turbans, happens to be from the Barbary Pirates Wikipedia page, it's the image that initially inspired me to give the pirate a turban.

Source:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/BainbridgeTribute.jpg

It seems that around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar, there was some sort of peace treaty in place to stop the Pirates attacking boats from certain countries, I think Britain may have been among them, and the Pirates did operate mainly along the Mediterranean as far as I can tell, so maybe the Battle of Trafalgar could act as a sort of distraction for the Barbary's to perform some kind of heist unnoticed, the story could take place just after the events and the Barbary Soldier is on his way back from the heist.

Sheets Seven & Eight

This sheet is kind of just a collection of miscellaneous silhouettes with no theme or connection, I was kind of just getting down some generic pirate shapes, nothing particularly inspirational to me.

I ended up getting a lot of silhouettes out of this base, explored quite a few ideas and I think I have come closer to reaching a final design, I think I am going to take inspiration from the Silhouettes in Sheets Three & Six and this one, to create 3 more, slightly more detailed silhouettes to then move on to my iterations, that works out nicely as it brings me to 100 silhouettes as well.

I was trying to not go with the cliché idea of adding a parrot to the pirates shoulder, but in the end I liked the versions with a rat on his shoulder, somewhat of a cliché still, but I like it.

In one of my reference images I used, There was an image with some guys with turbans, I thought it would be an interesting variation from the typical pirate hat, as I felt it was a bit corny maybe, and I thought simply a bandanna was a bit boring, I tried out some of the other hats that I have been using in the past already, like the top-hat and the bowler hat, I kind of liked them but I do really like the turban, in interesting, and kind of mysterious  which was something that I mentioned that I would like the capture in the soldiers character before.

Sheets Five & Six

Now that I have decided to continue in the pirate direction, I started getting a bit rough with the silhouettes, I kind of started giving him a sort of poncho like thing, and I liked that, It's quite an American western/South American thing, but I think it could still work, it could look nice anyway, I started trying around some variations of a poncho wearing pirate, and I do like it so far, it's a nice change from the long coats that most of the variations have been wearing so far. I tried out a variation, wear the poncho was simply an item of clothing and didn't cover the soldiers arms, but I felt that when it covers his arms, it makes him look quite menacing and mysterious, kind of what I am going for.

These are some more variations, I was mixing in some elements of some of the older silhouettes, like the top hat for example, but he doesn't really look like a pirate any more, I was also experimenting with some peg-legs. The guy on the left is a kind of Jack Sparrow character, the head at least, I like the idea of the pirate hat over the bandanna, and kind of dreadlocks with accessories in them, but he still has the poncho.

Bonus: just added a hood to the Sparrow guy while I was writing this, I thought it looked quite nice.

Sheet Four

This is a quick update of a few silhouettes that I actually completed about a week ago, wasn't particularly pleased with them, although I do quite like the two in the top left, I think at this point I want to abandon the idea of making the Soldier an actual soldier, and continue in the pirate direction.

Sheet Three

I decided to take my favourite silhouette so far, and modify it slightly and add some details in the clothing. I also started playing around with hats again, I'm beginning to feel like Gabe Newell.

It is still quite stylised and the proportions are off, but I think for the purpose they do the job. in the original version of this silhouette I of added some lines just for effect, not really knowing what they would be, and I kind of did that again with a couple of these, I just feel that they add a bit of character, and do sort of imply texture, movement and additional clothing or accessories.

Heads

A few silhouettes of heads, I felt like in a lot of my silhouettes I was just kind of changing the hat or something , so I thought I might as well do some dedicated head silhouettes since that way I could actually go into some detail.

Sheet Two

My first set of silhouettes were quite stiff and clean, I though that maybe it was hindering my creativity, so I decided for this sheet to use slightly more abstract and inaccurate proportions, this was really a mix between intentional abstraction and stylisation, and a lack of effort to making the proportions make sense, so I could focus more on other details.

The two outlined silhouettes are my favourite of this batch, I still prefer the 'Pirate' guy from before, but I think I'm making progress. By using a more rough and stylised approach this time, the silhouettes have a bit more character, which is good; simply having character gives an impression of  how The Soldier might look, or his facial expression or the patterns on his clothes etc.

Battle of Trafalgar

I got some images of paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar from google, I took my favourite three to give myself an impression of the kind of setting that the character will be operating in, this will probably come more in handy when I start doing some more detailed colour designs, but it's still good to get an image of the setting early on.

Source: 

1 http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Stanfield_Sketch_for_The_Battle_of_Trafalgar_1833.jpg

2 http://www.directart.co.uk/mall/images/dhm1112.jpg
3 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_027.jpg/300px-Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_027.jpg

Reference

Here are some reference Images I collected from google:

Source:

1 http://www.pastpatterns.com/moreimages/040color.jpg

2 http://i.piccy.info/i4/6d/13/7b8f2f211d777bb52d9bfdd8eade.jpeg

3 http://www.napoleonguide.com/images/napgal_battle.jpg

The first group of images above, are all soldier uniforms, as of course, The Soldier, is a soldier, I created a few silhouettes using this template, but I considered that the solider is probably not in full uniform, maybe he's is in a scruffy uniform with a casual hat, or vice versa (although that might look a bit strange.) So I wanted to give the solider either full casual clothing, or a mixture of his solider uniform and casual clothing as I mentioned.

Source:

1 http://lovinglifeandbeingabitch.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/x.jpg?w=545&h=662

2 http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/109775309637830445_mMJJx17r_b.jpg

3 http://www3.fitnyc.edu/museum/tailorsart/images/SUIT-19TH-CENTURY-thumb.jpg

4 https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/362587/standard/1942_86%2B250x300.jpg

5 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXyAiDZzuwX4Cu52htphIyqnJeBTyPL8wTLiV4nISsm6PN1bLigZnOzrbKjduDUQyabBJz9EG8HzEoAS0esbqWwzS-ql3MOmbyGjBlIJ5tpKztz7JRw58QpAAO_fuK8qGBmkKPVuVG9hY/s400/3110152632_e67cf22c91.jpg

I got some images 19th Century French fashion, the most abundant supply of reference was of women's clothing, predictable I guess, but I collected them as well I they could still inspire male clothing aesthetics.

I took some drawings of clearly upper class French men, but the story indicates that the soldier is scruffy and poor looking when he enters the town at first, enough that people don't believe that he could possibly be wealthy, so I took some images of 19th century French lower class (I wasn't being particular to the Napoleonic Era at this point since I figured that Fashion didn't change all that much within the century, especially amongst the poor.)

Sheet One

Just finally got around to creating this Blog today so I will have a few days worth of work to upload right now.

This is the first set of Silhouettes I created for the Soldier character in a re imagining of the fairy tale 'The Tinderbox' Set in The Napoleonic Period.

I wasn't particularly happy with any of them apart from the one I clearly and obnoxiously accentuated in the sheet, which I will explain a bit more in a moment.

I have had a bit of difficulty actually differentiating each silhouette from the last, most of the reference material that I have collected, which mostly consists of internet research, shows that a lot of the Napoleonic Era fashion, was very very similar: Top Hats, long coats, tight trousers and boots, most images show men wearing almost identical attire, even the soldiers uniforms are very similar in silhouette form, I feel like I'm travelling in circles with the revisions with each new silhouette.

The accentuated silhouette shown in the sheet was my favourite by far, it kind of reminds me of a pirate, which at this point I haven't decided whether is a good thing or a bad thing, I have considered setting my version of the story at some point after the Battle of Trafalgar on a ship (an idea I got from someone else) so a pirate-y attire might be fitting, it gives the main character a sort of scruffy and dishonest look as well, which is important foreshadowing at the first act of the tale (the meeting with the witch.)