07 May 2010

Painting stories, week 3

The task this week was to take a scene from our story and look at it in as many ways as possible - from far and near, from above and below, whatever. Alison suggested doing 30 or 40 variations - some people did at least a dozen.

My chosen scene is when Lady Mary, exploring Mr Fox's castle, sees him coming, dragging the body of a young lady who seems to have fainted. Lady Mary hides. Mr Fox suddenly notices the diamond ring on the young lady's finger and tries to take it off, but it is tight - so he gets out his sword and cuts off the young lady's hand - which flies right into Lady Mary's lap! Mr Fox doesn't see where it went and doesn't think to look where Lady Mary is hiding (fortunately).

With my recent immersion in steps and stairs, of course there had to be stairs in some of the scenes -
Bottom left is based on the initiation well at Quinta da Regaleira - a staircase winds inside a tower. Bottom far right includes a shaft of light falling across the chest, showing Mr Fox's shadow, with Lady Mary in the gloom. Not sure how I'd paint that, but we'll worry about that later....

By break time I had other views that incorporated stairs and shafts of light -After the break, instead of painting one of the scenes, most people carried on with yet more drawings. I found it hard to imagine just how Mr Fox would hold the young lady to drag her along, and will have to ask friends or family to help out with a bit of re-enactment (rings and swords prohibited).
Another puzzle was to visualise heads at odd angles - from above the skull and below the chin (lower right, with Lady M behind the curtain).

Homework last week was to find pictures of things we'd be using in our scene - as my scene has changed (and might again, who knows), I'll need to do more of this picture research. For instance, in the story Lady M hides behind "a cask". The story was known in the time of Shakespeare - so would Mr Fox be wearing a ruff? Is his "castle" perhaps a mouldering suburban des res? All sorts of combinations are possible....

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