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killj0i — Pre-emptive Rampage
Published: 2004-09-15 06:43:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 482; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 44
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Description
Sorry for the crappy slide, I was using natural light to shoot the photo and it didn't want to cooperate at all with this painting. Anyhoo, this was my 2nd oil painting -ever-, and I quickly turned toward the war in Iraq as a subject. The composition's development had a lot to do with the fact (at the time) that I really didn't know what Iraq as a territory looked like, much less spot it on a map without a big fat title above it. After including it as a major focal point for the eye it still looks quite unremarkable to me, and I wonder how many other people fail to visualize it in their heads when they think of the country, "Iraq."The second major visual reference has to do with Republicans, and how this party is very much singlehandedly helping to reshape the country itself, for good or ill.
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Comments: 4
Well, as an Iraqi it really affects me when people do stuff like this. I love it. The map detail and the elefant are great. Artistically, the detail is wonderful, and symbolically, it means a great deal to me.
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I knew what you were saying with this before I read the description...and that made me smile to be honest. I clicked on the thumbnail of this because I thought it might look kind of cool. I was mistaken- it's incredible. I enjoy this immensely. I have never tried to paint in oils- but this is your second piece? Amazing.
The colors in this have such impact to me. Red and black are so dramatic- the gray around it softens it. The gray to me is how we are presented the situation, the cushion we have between us and the tragic stuff that is going on. I like how the country looks like a heart to me. It looks like it is being shaped, into something new. I must admit I never used to know what Iraq looked like on a map.
Was it intentional that the back end of the elephant is brighter than the rest? Just curious. Oh, one thing- I wish the lines were straighter. I have no idea if tape works with oils- so maybe you should just ignore me
Alright, enough from me- wonderful piece, thank you for it
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Tape does work with oils, but there are a couple things to explain why the lines aren't as straight and defined as one might like--the first being I wasn't trying to get hard edges between the red and gray. I simply didn't mind the aesthetic it created. The second is that when I took this slide, I had to shoot it on the ground because of the way sunlight was hitting the paint. A result was a funny angle, and I had to use Photoshop's freeform distortion function to get it looking reasonable dead on. This might have also resulted in some crookedness, but ultimately I'm going to take another shot of this once I get my studio up and running, with some space to take good slides with controlled lighting.
Oils = analogue equivalent of the Ctrl-Z function. And I screw up a lot before something cool happens, so I need it!
The elephant might look a bit odd because I used a photo of a porcelain elephant as a reference. Some of the extreme shineyness of the photograph probably leaked into my rendering, but at the time it didn't strike me as off. Now that you mention it though...
I want to do another piece like this, and make it huge. With a large elephant and great big cracks in its path, to really capture the idea that this political animal is forging new divides in the earth with every step.
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Interesting- I would be interested to see another picture. I think you should make a larger version of this- it would be quite effective.
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