I Guess You Could Say I'm The Next "Pollock"

Well...it's been a while since I've done a painting no thanks to my procrastination and the crap ton of work I've had recently. But, I am now done my second movie poster, and I am much more satisfied with this one than the last. Since you guy keep up with my blog on a weekly basis, you would know that I am making a poster for the Korea movie, Oldboy. You would also know that I am portraying the Tongue Cutting scene. Here's the process I went through.

First thang is first (yes, I meant to say thang, not thing): minimizing this scene. When I watch this movie, I tend to group the Tongue Cutting scene with those before it (if you watch it, you'll understand why) because the scene I chose is actually very brief, though it feels like ages due to the gruesome and cringy aspects of it. Not only is it brief, but in the last blog, I also explained the simple yet masterful camera angles that were used. I sort of wanted to mimic how the director showed this scene from a unique angle, but at the same time, I wanted to show the tongue so that whether or not you watched the movie, you can figure out what happened. I finally decided that I was going to paint scissors with dashed lines (sort of like the "cut here" thing) that lead to a tongue (most likely the emoji one because it is basic). It's basically a combination of these two images...

Through this poster, I want to help portray the determination of the main character and highlight the bloody aspects of this powerful scene.

Because my art skills match that of a pile of dirt, I knew that painting the tongue would be hard because you can’t just paint it a single shade of pink. There has to be some different shades in order to make it more 3-D. I turned to my Handy-Dandy Acrylic Made Easy: Getting Started Book to figure out how to step up my painting skills slightly. Using the color wheel, the book explained the basics of creating different shades of the same color by adding black and white. For the tongue, I would simply need different shades of pink so this definitely helped.

After having done that, I started off with the solid background. I went with black because this movie was incredibly dark and I feel that this would best match the tone and mood of the movie. I used the biggest brush I had so I’m not spending eons just working on the background (there is a picture of the brush below). The book I bought recommended using long strokes to make sure the paint spreads evenly and also to paint a second layer to ensure that everything looks full in color.

Once that was done, the next step was to paint the movie title, director, and actors. So my expert recently got back to me (recently as in this morning), and talked a lot about having my own identity as an artist and having some sort of trademark (I’ll post the interview later). Based on my first poster, I decided to go with the same style, meaning that at the top I would put the actors/actresses’ names and at the bottom would be the movie title and the director’s name. For the director’s name, I decided to use the formula of, “A (Director’s name) Film” as my own little thang (not thing, thang). To do this, I mimicked the font that was used during the opening credits to the movie.

After that, it was time to paint the centerpiece. Though the scissors were easy to get done, the tongue took much more time for me. To begin with, I made pink using red and white and then applied either white or black to make them darker or lighter. I decided to make a few different shades so I had options to work with. So this is what my tongue originally started as:

There is a fine example of my art skills (if I can even call them skills). Clearly, the tongue was missing something, and thanks to some advice from Justin Daniel Ryan (aka the Man with Three First Names), I was able to create a better looking tongue.

That was supposed to be the end of my painting, but something was nagging me. The painting was very mild and friendly to me, and it didn’t encompass the violent aspects of this scene and the film. That led me to attempt to splatter “blood” on the canvas using red paint in a messy way (almost like Pollock). I was kinda worried because if it turned out bad, then there was nothing I could do really to fix it.

Personally, I think it turned out pretty well. I think the messy look adds more to it and helps to better portray the scene. I am becoming more confident in my painting skills, especially after taking that risk with the splattering. One of the things I can work on is to be more spontaneous. I have always been a planner and will wait on things, and this often makes this painting process dragged out. It also causes me to second guess myself on certain things. I think that sometimes I need to just go with the flow and be more expressive than meticulous.

I also still feel like my paintings are very flat. Though for these types of posters it isn’t that big of a deal, I want to see if I can step up my painting in the next two posters by making things pop out more. But I am currently content with my art and I hope that you guys are liking them too.

Movie Recommendation #5:

Title: Inside Llewyn Davis

Director: The Coen Brothers

Starring: Oscar Isaac

Date Released: January 10th, 2014

Sources:
https://www.123rf.com/photo_23659211_scissors-with-cut-lines-isolated-on-white-background.html
http://emojipedia.org/tongue/