Friday, February 12, 2010

Annunciation Two

More work on the annunciation today, specifically modelling the fish. Now, what, I hear you cry has a fish got to do with Jan van Eyck's Annunciation or Kandinsky? Well perhaps a fish marks the perfect transition between these two objects. There must definitely be something decidedly aquatic about both pictures.

Anyway, on to the concept sketch.

As you can see the dimensionality of the image is the overriding factor present, and indeed one cause of the idea was three dimensional compositional thinking, that might well explain the fish, for here the fish-eye with its wide angle lens is a representation of multi-dimensionality and so the perspective distorted fish itself a vital contribution to the composition. Then, what is the link to the aforementioned masterworks? Kandinsky was decidedly two dimensional, concerned with abstraction, yet van Eyck was enthralled by perspective. Note that all of this reasoning is pure speculation because I scribbled the idea in an instant without any tangible conscious thought. I'm increasingly confident that my unconscious is more intelligent than my conscious mind, and I always trust it.

Now I thought I'd put up a scan of one page from my ideas book, several hundred pages large and growing daily.

This proves that the vast majority of painting ideas are destined not to be painted. I'll worry about going back to paint them when I'm 75 years old, or so!

Thanks for reading. The King of the Rocket Men is now poised and about to fall of a cliff. Find out if he survives in the next exciting update!