Thanks, guys!
Scotness wrote:Good luck Roger - once again great art work - my only criticism would be that the wood grain detail is so strong (and mesmerising) that it takes focus away from the old man. Which may be your intention of course.
Sort of, actually.
The concept behind this painting is that there are two subjects, not one. The weathered loading chute has been this old cowboy's partner his entire life and they both needed to show their age. So I put a lot of detail into the loading chute and fence that I normally would have downplayed.
Classical position of the cowboy as a single subject would have him facing
into the painting with the background as a secondary, less detailed focal point. But I wanted to present a sense of time and also a sense of an impending change. If they had both faced the same direction, it would have created a feeling of continued unity; that they were ready for as many more roundups as time might continue to throw at them. But by facing the cowboy
away and out of the painting and making the loading chute as detailed as the cowboy, we (hopefully) get a sense of impending separation between two subjects, hence the title "The Last Roundup". They're like an old married couple that sit at dinner and no longer talk to each other. The cowboy is looking off to a different future because he can walk away after a lifetime of hard work and toil but the loading chute is there to stay, unable to do anything else but endure the elements of time.
Scotness wrote:Lighting wise too the clouds suggest diffused light but the high contrast grain suggest strong coherent light - not impossible, but interesting when you do get shafts under sullen skies - that kind of effect would look really good in colour -- the original is black and white I take it.
I did the painting in black and white on purpose, though the original reference photo was in color. I knew that black and white would be more dynamic and really show off the grain of the cedar. I like contrasting different lighting schemes in a single painting. We get the type of lighting you see in this painting all the time out here. Boiling, dark clouds with hard sunlight punching through on areas of the ground. Very dynamic. I can't get enough of it.
steve hyde wrote:What materials are you working with?
This is acrylic on a 3 foot by 5 foot stretched canvas. I paint quite large because my hand is not very steady and my eyesight is getting worse as time goes by. Too many years of looking through a super 8 camera without ground glass focusing, I guess. ;)
Interestingly enough, this painting does have something to do with watching things on a projection screen. As I noted in my initial post, my entry number is 1765 with others no doubt entering after me. With about 2000 entries, the judges have to quickly move through a lot of images. While the final round is judged from the actual canvas, the original submission is a hi-rez JPEG only. I was originally going to enter a color painting and was concerned about how it would look on a computer monitor but I also knew that this black and white painting would not be as powerful on a tiny viewing screen (it really needs to be seen in person for full effect). After some phone calls, I found out that they use a data projector on a 10 foot screen for the judges to view the entries. My experience has been that data projectors usually have just awful color but they can project black and white stuff really, really bright and sharp. Since they would be looking at a large image, I decided to use this painting. It isn't my favorite but I felt it would translate better to the viewing method being used by the judges.
Roger
