I got the commission. Not that I really feared being rejected, I know Bill (my patron) wanted to do this as much I do, but it was a shock that when he saw both of my sketches he decided that I needed to do both paintings. So I ended up landing both of them instead of just one. Do the happy dance! Okay, enough playing around...
So the work begins. This is the loose sketch for the first painting, Death in Malaga.
A bit about the painting. Towards the later half of the book, and of the war, Nell decides that if her and Edward are going to die that they might as well die together, so she starts walking with him to work. There was one particular day Edward described, where he was walking with Nell and the sky had otherwise been beautiful out, but you wouldn't know it when entering Malaga from all the smoke from the bombings. He then went on to describe how brutal and continuous the killings were. The Anarchist groups especially would round people up daily and shoot them and dump the bodies in mass graves, people would come around and cheer during the executions. Edward used to wear an American pin, and carry around a pipe, playing the role on an important American diplomat. The tactic saved his life more than once. This particular scene came to mind for the picture.
The good thing about having already done paintings like The Pale Cast of Thought and Faust, is that I've started to get a good method going for how to progress on this sort of thing. Here's what I'm considering right now:
Casting. Who plays what role. For the two main characters, Edward and Nell, all I'm looking for with a reference are people of the same height and build, the faces I'm taking from old photo's of the couple. For the characters in the background there's a lot less pressure, it doesn't have to be anyone specific in any particular pose, but I do have to decide male and female, and it helps to come up with motivations for the people doing the actions, so that it looks genuine.
Location. I've been walking around my neighborhood looking for alleys and streets that fit what I need, which is a street running up a slight elevation, Cobble stone is also important, Chicago common bricks and old stucco too. None of these are hard to find in the city. For the rest of it though, I'll have to pull from references on destruction and rubble and then start designing. The hardest part here is making parts look destroyed without making the clutter and rubble detract from the picture.
Costume. Who's wearing what and why? I've been doing a lot of research on clothing. This is a guilty pleasure for me. I don't like shopping, especially buying clothes, but for some reason figuring out what a character needs to be wearing makes me feel like Sherlock...if he were much less intelligent and painter...It's like getting into character. You have to put yourself into the mind and time of the people you're pretending to be. I think it's a lot of fun.
Time of day and source of light. In this instance I will be working in overcast light. In most cases tracking the light is important. This scene would be happening in the morning, so when it's overcast in the morning is when I'll be shooting my references. Normally I would figure out what direction they need to be facing, but its not needed here.
Color. What will the overall harmony of the painting be? When I'm doing something like this I like to collect paintings that remind of something I want to working towards. One thing I look to see is how artists of the past might have done something in a similar palette or affect that I want to learn from.
Since it came out, I've been using Pinterest to collect all my photo refs for inspiration on my paintings. I usually make the board private, but in this case I've decided to make this board public so that people can see my thought process.
So there are a few things I need to order for costumes and props, then all I need to do is take my reference shots. In order to do that I'll have to stage the scene. That's a post for another time...like when I figure it out.
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