Precision: Step 3
As you can see, I’m continuing my progress from far to near by attacking the buildings in the distance next, but in a much less destructive way than, say, a giant robotic Godzilla might. Which reminds me of the time my father, who is a realist landscape painter, decided, just for kicks, to paint a Godzilla monster coming over the mountains in the distance of a large landscape that had been commissioned of him. He had finished the painting and wanted to see what his patron’s reaction would be if he just presented it to him for approval with the added monster looming back there. The patron, while inspecting it, apparently said nothing at first and just stared in silence for a while before calmly stating that the painting was very nice, except for something back there that he couldn’t quite figure out. “What is this next to the mountains?” he asked, or at least I’m sure he said something close to that, anyway. And my father’s reply was simply “That’s Godzilla.” Of course, he painted it back out before sending it to the patron for good, but if art conservators ever do a routine x-ray of that painting, they will inevitably find Godzilla lurking under the visible paint layer, which I’m sure will be a surprise not unlike the “real” Godzilla coming on a stroll over the hill.
And so here we have the execution of the central skyscraper. My plan is to fade the colors of this building from light on top to dark on the bottom to go along with the same hint of evening light that I already established in the rosy-colored lower clouds. The process itself should be fairly self-explanatory by viewing the image provided. I apologize for the inconsistency of the photos. It turns out my regular studio photographer who I keep on hand 7 days a week had to step out for lessons in Portuguese and I was forced to train my butler to take my photos for me. Perhaps I’m just not a good teacher. Or perhaps it was just a spotty, clouded day when I took these shots. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 am
That is the single coolest painting commission story I have ever heard. Oh, and the buildings in the painting are really quite lovely. Are you just pulling them out of your sleeve, or is there a particular architectural inspiration behind them?
October 30th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Oh, I’m actually glad you asked, Bryan. I was going to go into that, but the story became kind of lost in the process.
Believe it or not, I actually had what I thought was a clever idea for the architecture, but I may have foiled myself in pulling it off.
My secret personal theme for this painting, which has no bearing on the actual theme and therefore gives me no real reason to mention it, is that the figure was actually taking it easy in Galt’s Gulch, several generations after its establishment. (which, of course, is a “what if” interpretation of the story, kind of like our graphic novel idea)
So… in conjunction with that I had this fun idea to base the architecture on real buildings that had not yet been built. So my painting would actually be portraying the skyscrapers as if they were already built, but before they had actually been built, if that makes any sense. So I sorted through all sorts of architectural drawings for building proposals looking for something that seemed right. And I found it, and it’s the basis for what you see, but somehow I managed to lose the reference material and can’t for the life of me figure out where I found it.
I believe these are buildings that are to be built in Dubai, but I can’t actually state that for certain anymore, which is unfortunate, since it ruins my whole sneaky little ploy for personal amusement. There’s so much crazy building going on in Dubai that I thought it would make a good model for a contemporary Galt’s Gulch, at least as far as architecture goes.
Since all this is just completely secret content that I included for my own personal pleasure, it doesn’t effect the painting itself that I misplaced the reference. But it was going to make such a great story, especially if the central building were to be completed six months after I had already painted it.
Oh well.
If you squint closely enough at the minute text that is going to be printed on the wine cork when this thing is finished, though, you’ll be able to see that the wine is a product of “…t’s Gulch”, if you’re actually looking for it. The label itself isn’t going to be visible.
So that’s my little secret with this one.