When I look over my portfolio, sometimes I try to see what’s missing. It’s difficult to look for ways to add some variety, while at the same time challenging myself artistically. For a while I’ve noticed that I never really paint any types of animals. So when I was given the opportunity to paint something I haven’t tackled previously, in this case a great white shark, I went for it.

I have a tendency in my paintings to feature one individual prominently, so it was refreshing this time that the “main character” in the painting would be a shark. Water is also something that I enjoy painting, playing with the shifts in color and its reflective qualities.

Over the last few months I’ve been approaching the process of painting differently as well. In the past I would simply jump in with the characters until they were fully rendered and then proceed to paint the surrounding background.

I would find many times that color relationships would be drastically different, some colors would be too intense while others may be too saturated. The result would feel muddled and haphazard. What I’ve been doing recently is beginning with the most distant objects in the background, in this case the sky and sea, and gradually working my may to the foreground. It’s never a perfect process, but I think the initial layers of paint form a more cohesive image.
Since college I’ve been using Golden Acrylic paints, and while I’ve used all sorts of other brands and find most of them to work just fine, I simply prefer Golden’s line of acrylics. Recently they released a line of Historical Acrylic Hues, which are supposedly recreations of colors available long ago. I first tried these out a few months ago but struggled with the paint flow and low viscosity. At first I didn’t think I’d be able to use them, however I really enjoyed the range of colors I could achieve with them, particularly with skin tones. I decided to stick it out and now, with the exception of Titanium White, Jaws is painted entirely with these historic hues.

Often I butt heads with a painting, so it was nice to work on something that went as smoothly as this. The final painting is acrylic on canvas, 18×24 inches.

Every once and a great while I’ll watch a film that completely catches me off guard. The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, long before I knew who Quentin Tarantino was, I was fifteen years old. From the moment Jules shot the guy laying on the couch in the motel room, Pulp Fiction was as rough on me as the characters were to each other. Unpredictable and shocking, I felt I was watching real people commit these horrible and sometimes hilarious acts, instead of just characters in a movie.

That first impression remained with me when I began working on this painting. When I select a project to work on, I like to research it to locate any information that may inform which direction I’ll take the painting. In this case, I searched online for film reviews and the observation I found most common was that this film dealt with salvation and redemption. These are very powerful themes and I felt they worked nicely with my tendency to portray characters at their core. The most obvious use of this is my depiction of Butch, who I wanted to show at the moment he decides to save Marsellus Wallace, because I feel that speaks most truthfully to his character.

With the other characters I tended to pander more to my fifteen year old first impressions, with Jules being ruthless and cold and Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace exuding what I saw as cool. The color choices I used for the characters were also intended to reflect their personalities, in particular Mia’s face being red meant to signify lust and Vincent’s infatuation with her, and the blues in Jules’s face reinforcing his cold demeanor.

This painting was also the first time that the dimensions of the canvas reflected the widescreen aspect ratio of the film I was portraying, giving it a more cinematic feel. Another first in this painting is the inclusion of Easter eggs for those familiar with the film, such as the briefcase and Butch’s gold watch. Setting the painting in the diner also felt appropriate, as the scenes within it served to bookend the film.

Mostly my painting of Pulp Fiction was a sort of amalgam of my past and present perceptions of the film. To me the most enjoyable part of painting something is following the direction it will take and seeing how different themes or ideas can interact with one another.

Gallery work has been a developing interest of mine for the past year or so, in an attempt to branch out in my artistic endeavors. So during one of my visits to www.illustrationmundo.com last December a post from The Uppercase Gallery caught my eye. The gallery, located in Calgary, Alberta Canada, was seeking artists to join The Shatner Show, an event that would feature 76 artists and illustrators depicting William Shatner in his various roles and personalities. The gallery owner, Janine Vangool, asked those artists interested to submit samples of their work for consideration, which I did. A few days later I received a reply from Janine saying she liked my work and welcomed me into the show.

What strikes me about gallery work is that in some instances, such as the case here, the galleries really don?t know what the final images will be. This is a leap of faith on the gallery’s part, especially dealing with unknown or emerging artist such as myself. From my perspective there was mixture of excitement and anxiety to do the best possible work.

The only criteria were that the image pertains to William Shatner. Whether the work was based on one of his films, television series or other pursuits was left to the creative freedom of the artist. I knew I wanted to depict something a little different or offbeat, as a way to stand out from the crowd. After enthusiastically telling a friend of mine about the show, he told me about Shatner?s performance of Elton John’s Rocketman at the 1978 Sci-Fi Awards show. After viewing the footage on YouTube I was sold.

I especially enjoyed the low-budget effect depicting multiple Shatners performing the song, and decided to portray that in my painting. I changed the setting from a stage to outer space to reflect the psychedelic nature of the song, and also as a nod to Shatner’s space-faring alter ego. I further emphasized this by replacing the stool he is sitting on with the Enterprise.

Recently I have been trying to push some of the characteristics of my work to a more graphic quality. With the Rock-et-man! painting, I included some spatial gasses in the form of flat color. As with the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind painting, I am again striving for a balance between the more photo-realistically rendered and the more graphic elements in my work.

The painting was completed in February, in time for the March 1st deadline. The gallery asked for electronic copies at that time, which would later be used in a book produced for the show, with the physical work due at the gallery by May 1st. The painting was framed and shipped via FedEx around mid April, arriving at The Uppercase Gallery about a week later.

For me The Shatner Show was a tremendous opportunity to show my work alongside many other great artists. I enjoyed every part of the process, from working on the painting to attending the opening party at the gallery on June 15th. For those interested, The Shatner Show runs until August 31st and may also be viewed online at www.theshatnershow.com.

It can be challenging to boil down an entire film into a single image, so instead of illustrating any particular scene I try find the major themes or overall concept of the film as I feel that will generate something much more powerful. With Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I saw a film that underneath everything else in the story was about two people trying to make their relationship work despite themselves.

I especially liked how the characters of Joel and Clementine were opposites. Using different colors to express mood and emotion rather than natural skin tone is something I?ve been playing with for a while. The complementary colors blue and orange create a natural contrast within a composition and seemed fitting for Joel’s moody personality and Clementine’s extroverted nature. I also wanted their body language to reflect their states of mind, with their bodies turned away but their faces attempting to look at one another, hinting that these two have some hope in working things out.

The crumbling house is a fantastic visual metaphor for Joel and Clementine’s relationship. Compositionally I wanted the house positioned between the two characters, as if their failing relationship were a barrier preventing them from finding happiness with one another.

I have also been experimenting with how I render elements within a painting. With this one I utilized a greater degree of blending with the characters but left the background colors flat, in an attempt to establish a greater sense of depth. All the components of the painting such as color choices and painting techniques were used to heighten the juxtaposition between Joel and Clementine.

The films Fight Club, A Beautiful Mind, The Machinist, Secret Window and Donnie Darko all share a common theme: the antagonists exist solely in the minds of the protagonists. I find the more compelling link is that these five protagonists all suffer from an intense anxiety and loneliness. It is this internal struggle, the conflict of self, which drew me to these characters.

Being of fan of these films, I had initially considered doing paintings of one or two of them separately, but as the connections that drove these men became clearer to me, I felt combining them would generate a more powerful image.

Conceptually and compositionally, this painting is directly influenced by Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. As with the films, Manet’s painting also deals with isolation, and the sense that what the viewer is shown may not be reality. I was adamant that the painting would be interpretive to the viewer, left to decide for themselves if what I presented was real or not. Now that I had my concept, it was time to focus on the other elements of the painting.

Posture, body language and facial expressions all had to convey these feelings of anxiety. Many of my references are taken directly from the films, so I try to select those that are most appropriate to my concept. Whether it’s Russell Crowe clutching his briefcase or Johnny Depp looking over his shoulder, there’s always a moment or two that really defines what these characters are feeling at their core.

My color palette also had to work to convey the mood of this environment. I wanted very somber colors such as the blues for the imaginary friends contrasted with the warmer browns and deep reds of the bar. Everything had to work together in this painting to establish a connection, not just between the characters, but with the viewer.