[Jason Manley]

craig,

sorry to be unclear.

When I start my pics they look very similar to your image above. I paint in patterns and shapes until it starts to feel like the thing that I most want to express. That is my thumbnail...your above piece looks like a thumbnail all blown up to full resolution because of its lack of refinement. it is the lack of refinement and polished rendering that is haredest to balance when trying to still retain the feel of the image. I often get the feeling early in the piece but find that the proportions are poor and the space does not read. I see this in your image above. When I go to start rendering it, it is a balancing act to keep the abstract feel or emotional quality in the piece and what the image looks like spacially. I completely believe that it is possible to keep your feel and still have a decent amount of purposful rendering so that we as viewers have something to look at as well as feel.

you totally nailed the feel of battle with your placement of helmets and all the repeated little hacks and slashes (metaphoric design elements...conscious or not)in your marks...there are so many diagonals that I dont even want to count them all...there are no verticals or horizontals...except implied ones with your shape placement. this is where your movement and feel is springing from...the metaphoric design and the color. Your shapes are at times very organic...though uncared for at times too. The same goes for your brush strokes. that is something that I really get out of nc wyeth and goya...they get action but their same abstract compositional devices that you are using are more cared for and are much clearer to read than the pic above....how much of that you choose to add or throw out is up to you. But I also think that good proportion and good space is important to you. I see these things in your other work...though I do see that less in your figures. oops...did I say that? : )
I see a lot of traditional design in your stuff. To be honest, it is that as much as your ideas that draws me to your work. You have those two aspects balanced well.

I guess what I am saying is that balancing the abstract and the clear spacial and proportional narrative is difficult. Keeping the same feel you talk about and having good proportion and space as well as expression is something that can be balanced in many ways. The above piece doesnt feel balanced this way. Thus it feels unfinished.

Forgive me if I am out of place in my talking to you this way.


jason

[Wiro]

I'm in absolutely no position to school you, Craig so I'll just give my humble opinion

For the feeling of battle, I would imagine the viewer should have the feeling of being IN it. You mentioned Saving Private Ryan. In that film I felt I was among the soldiers, really feeling their fear (or at least imagening I did).

Your picture has an elevated perspective and you look at the people from the side, giving the impression that the viewer is somewhat distanced and uninvolved. It looks like the soldiers don't care you're there.

So maybe placing the viewer lower and in the middle of it all would be more dynamic and scaring. Perhaps with a partly silhouette of a guy looming into the pic from one side, charging past you and lots of dirt and flying pebbles in the air.

Well, just my 0.10 Swiss Rappen.
You prod buttock in any case

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Wiro
secondreality.ch

[Flexible Elf]

This one, even moreso than a lot of your other quickpaintings, oozes with implied detail. My brain easily fills in the blanks.

There seems to be a little backlash to the hack-and-slash-battle swords-and-maidens works on the board but (as you can imagine) I can't get enough of them. Keep 'em comin' spooge.

As for crits I can't really spew out any. I like the color choice. Only thing I would say would be to have some more atmospherics or flying debris, but I think those would be hard to add in abstract way without really ruining the whole motion concept you have going. It's nigh impossible to imply detail on grains of dirt

-Flexible Elf

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http://www.geocities.com/flexible_elf/Main.html

[pierre]

I was thinking alot of what you said about importing emotion in to the pics, and realized too actually how hard it is. It is very easy to come up with quick ideas on how to go about it to achieve that effect, but once sitting there with the "empty canvas", you realize how deep into it you are, at least it was for me today as I made this pic.

I am not that juvenile to think that any of my pics could help you, but maybe looking at me "falling on my face" could help you even more than just falling on your own face. Hopefully I can learn alot too. Thanks for the inspiration spooge.

The final choice for me was to imply the emotion here by, not making a macro view of a battle, but zoom in to a particular event in the crowd of say two thousand knights plus one. Maybe zoom into that area, an area among many, with its own personal story to tell. Give the viewer maybe one person to follow and let that person follow you.

I don't know, just my simple ideas.




Pierre


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http://www.crosswinds.net/~pierrehannah

[This message has been edited by pierre (edited December 10, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by pierre (edited December 10, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by pierre (edited December 10, 2000).]

[Skeezer]

Spooge, nice composition, about your trying to achieve a certain emotion, I think you should increased the momentum of the two armies clashing, sped them up a little like they were two racing groups, and the only thing that was going to stop them was the impact between themselves and the other army. A scene in Braveheart comes to mind where the scotts and the english slam into eachother, and the two front ranks fly 6 feet into eachother's armies before they're brought to a halt. When I think of battle I think of it happening so fast that it's almost impossible to see what's going on. In your pic, it's pretty obvious, who's who, and where they're going.

I think right now they look like they're walking or marching towards eachother, I think a greater sense of urgency would be portrayed with an increase in the speed of the clash.

anyway, hope that helps

-Skeez

[This message has been edited by Skeezer (edited December 10, 2000).]

[pierre]

that is a great idea skeezer,

I am wondering on how one would go about to create that illusion in a painting. I may come up with same lame piece tomorrow.

Pierre

[Skeezer]

very nice Pierre, I'm not sure if you were going for this or not, but to me the image is suggesting a pov, of one of the soldiers, I like the way you have the choice of either focusing on the cavalry advancing towards you, or the men who are down in front. It's like you are forced to choose which threat is more immediate, makes you look back and forth, and creates that sense of uncertainty.

As for your question, I think the image should be blurred except for maybe the focus of the painting, like the viewer has focused on one element to stabalize himself in the sea of motion, also all the figures should be unbalanced to show that there is a great speed in their action and a certain "no turning back now" aspect to them. For instance, a camera shot of a car just before it's impact with a wall.

I look forward to seeing what you post on the subject Pierre.

-Skeez

[EviLToYLeT]

HRmmmm. Ok I just read through all the posts. Well... Really like the picture there, as with all your pictures. There's a lot of confusion in there, great for portraying mood and all. But, after I've been looking at it for a while, I really can't tell what some things are.

Anyway, I'd just like to introduce my theory (haven't tested it) of motion . One of the first things that you must be careful of is not to define edges so much and so forth. Otherwise you'll get a lot of stationary pictures .. as you mentioned like the old war paintings. Keeping them loose is also good. BUT, I think that it would work if you made the objects closer to the camera blurrier than those further away. Just take a look out the car(from a side window) and you'll notice that the things in the distance are clearer and less blurrier than things closer. Hope im making sense so far. So looser things closer to the camera and more well defined farther and farther away.

Also, if you freeze fram say anything in a movie, it'll most likely look like it's not in motion. It requires a series of frames to demonstrate the motion...which is pretty hard to convey. So, in theory, if you have a very blurred soilder near the front and a somewhat defined soilder in the back.. with same range of colors.. it'll be assumed that the thing in front is a soilder in motion. Subtle hints must also be provided to help give the idea of motion. For example, a speeding car through the dust would leave of course, dust trail. But the dust would be more well defined.

But then again, it's a tendency for people to focus on things of action. For example, your just looking into the street and all of a sudden a car zooms by. It is most likely that youe eyes will focus on the car. So, the thing in motion will definitely have to be the focal point.

But then again. most .. haha what am i saying. Anyway, it would be nice to have some subtle hints to suggest a bit of motion. For example, in a war scene, maybe a stationary drummer boy. Also, using somewhat mid-expressions are good as well. Or maybe expressions that you cannot hold for a long time. For example, a mouth fully open screaming some words...

ok.. i think i have just made a total ass out of myself. Anyway, hope it helps some ppl