This past week has been problem-solving and laying the groundwork for the next painting in the series, The Sniper. In an interesting twist, this took longer than The Challenger, even though I had a concept already. The problem? The concept I had was somewhere from six months to a year old, long before I’d seriously thought the robot-paintings-as-series concept through.
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| Version 1, where the pelvis is the star. Whoops. |
The main issue with updating the composition was matching up the story in my head to the actual painting. This robot, Sunspot Crusher, is piloted only by the one lady pilot, Iris. Years ago, a betrayal by an ally cost her her first robot and left that scar on her forehead. It left her hurt and suspicious, and now she works alone, fights alone, with survival as her number one priority. That story was what I wanted to hint at through the painting’s composition.
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| Version 2, it's getting there, slowly but surely. |
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| Version 3–lots better! Those control arms look a lot like exercise machines, though. |
The main problem with the old composition was that the painting centered on Sunspot Crusher’s pelvis. Obviously, that wouldn’t work, so I moved things around. After a few tries, I had Iris and Crusher focus on a single target outside the picture frame. That united them, and gave the composition the sense of purpose and drive I’d been looking for. I added the control panel and the fancy joysticks to Iris to make it obvious she was piloting Crusher, and faded Crusher’s feet into the background and threw some tank wrecks in there for scale, and boom, finished.
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| Version 4...PERFECT. |
In Part 2, I will be under way with the real painting. Stay tuned!