Colour test in a painting
I decided to test the colour theory I previously talked about in my earlier posts. Using the swatches made from the screen gabs of examples of ominous moments in films. One of the reasons I felt these scenes stood out from many others is because of the help of the right colour pallet that managed to aid the final image/scene in capturing a haunting outcome to fit the dialog.
While starting the thumbnails it became clear that I needed the right composition as well as colour to get the best effect from my image as I could. My idea was to paint a street at night with a building in the distance that provides the only warm tones of colour/light in the scene. I ended up pushing the building further and further into the back as I wanted to limit the amount of warm colours that would appear. It was my aim to allow the colder tones to outbalance the warm ones to gain a heavy chilling feeling from the image.
Secondly I had to think about camera placement and how to frame the shot. I then had another realisation. I needed my image to be a one point perspective. One thing that makes horror films and games so frightening is the feeling of not being able to escape and having to walk down or look in a certain direction. I set my image up in one point perspective to guide the viewers eye into the distance meeting the creature dead centre in the middle. I pointed as many things towards the creature as I could as to not let the viewers eyes wander and escape. The road, lights and the wires in the image all guide the eye to this spot. and to add more scale as well as guide the viewers eye I added three kids into the foreground. This was also done to help the mood of the image adding kids in instead of fully grown adults added to the helpless feeling of the image.
When thinking about the style I would use I had a realism image in my head as I felt it would be easier to connect the image with emotion through realism. However I'm interested in experimenting with different style and moods after this test piece. I decided to look at art from Simon Stalenhag's book 'Things from the flood' as he paints with realistic colours despite painting things that appear un-earthly and alien, similar to what I had planned for this painting.
(Simon Stalenhag's work)
There was plenty of images from Stalenghag's work that I looked at to help me study colours and lay outs. One of the things that took a bit of trial and error painting this piece was sticking to the mainly blue colour pallet that I had set myself, it felt strange painting trees blue and infusing darker colours into what would normally be a vibrant colour to help fit the mood of the scene.
Once I got the image to the stage where I felt it was complete I put the image through the same process as I did the screen grabs from the previous posts. I created a colour swatch for the image to make sure that I'd reached my target of having blue tones dominate the image with a small amount of warm tones in there aswell.
Ways I feel like I could improve this image to add to the creepy factor is by dropping the camera lower to the point where it's level with the kids view point and to also bring them closer to the camera so that the viewer feels like there a member of the kids group. This would help the viewer to be absorbed into the image and feel the emotions of the colours more.
A second thing I'd like to improve about this is more shades of colour. I focused a lot on making sure the tones were right by having darker and a few lighter shades added in that adding different shades took a back seat. I have a lot of blues in this image but I could have made it more eye catching by adding greens in as well or by possibly having more drastic shades in there. These are all things I'll keep in mind for my next piece.
While starting the thumbnails it became clear that I needed the right composition as well as colour to get the best effect from my image as I could. My idea was to paint a street at night with a building in the distance that provides the only warm tones of colour/light in the scene. I ended up pushing the building further and further into the back as I wanted to limit the amount of warm colours that would appear. It was my aim to allow the colder tones to outbalance the warm ones to gain a heavy chilling feeling from the image.
Secondly I had to think about camera placement and how to frame the shot. I then had another realisation. I needed my image to be a one point perspective. One thing that makes horror films and games so frightening is the feeling of not being able to escape and having to walk down or look in a certain direction. I set my image up in one point perspective to guide the viewers eye into the distance meeting the creature dead centre in the middle. I pointed as many things towards the creature as I could as to not let the viewers eyes wander and escape. The road, lights and the wires in the image all guide the eye to this spot. and to add more scale as well as guide the viewers eye I added three kids into the foreground. This was also done to help the mood of the image adding kids in instead of fully grown adults added to the helpless feeling of the image.
(Simon Stalenhag's work)
Once I got the image to the stage where I felt it was complete I put the image through the same process as I did the screen grabs from the previous posts. I created a colour swatch for the image to make sure that I'd reached my target of having blue tones dominate the image with a small amount of warm tones in there aswell.
A second thing I'd like to improve about this is more shades of colour. I focused a lot on making sure the tones were right by having darker and a few lighter shades added in that adding different shades took a back seat. I have a lot of blues in this image but I could have made it more eye catching by adding greens in as well or by possibly having more drastic shades in there. These are all things I'll keep in mind for my next piece.
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