Constantine Research

For my work on Constantine I looked at a variety of art subject:
Punk Art, Macabre Art, Pubs and Bar paintings and finally Smoking Art.

Punk Art:

Zen Arcade
Husker Du

 I like the surreal sense to collage has in this piece when combined with the bright neon colours of the cars. The colours clearly attracts the main sense of attention but what I really like in this piece is the use of mark making. In the sky there's a dotted and smudged effect which not only adds to the composition to break up the white sky, but adds an industrial pollution-like element to the piece. The Floor has a great sense of texture as well where the water's colouration looks oil like which links back to the junk yard setting.

Deeper The Wound
Jacob Bannon, Derek Hess and Florian Bertmer

 The best thing about this piece is the simplicity of the illustration. The style of drawing is irratic and similar to some of the life drawing's I produced at college. The way that blood is portrayed in the piece is an interesting approach also, the blood is just scratched and smeared over the top of the illustration but works really effectively.

Romans in Britain
Jamie Reid

 What drew me to this piece is the use of inverted colours. The character in this piece looks very demonic which fits the second criteria for my research whilst using a really simple graphics technique.

Drawing
Screaming Mad George

The composition of this piece is something I really like. To try and find art inspiration for my Constantine work, this is what I'm looking for. I can picture making a similar piece with Constantine in a bar perhaps with this sort of demon faced background behind him. The layout of the image is very interesting and I wonder if I could apply this effect in a subtler sense on a painting.




Macabre Art:

Francis Bacon:

Francis Bacon is an artist who's work I never used to like. I always found it messy, morbid and ugly to look at. I've revised these opinions now because I understand it now, Bacon's work (and dislike of the clergy) is his view points on the world and he wanted to display the horrors of religion through this work. I selected these 3 Bacon pieces as research for my Constantine work because the comic book is very religion based. Bacon managed to take the image of the pope and transform him into a demonic like screaming creature, especially in the piece where the hanging meat forms angelic wings. The association in Bacon's work is really well done, where these images are designed to shock and appaul whilst at the same time associate themselves with organised religion.


William Blake: Red Dragon series

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With The Sun

The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea

The Number of the Beast is 666

Blake's Red Dragon series is a representation of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. This is another horrifying portrayal of religion in artwork where Blake has painted images of the devil. The first one is the most popular, made famous by the Hannibal films 'Manhunter' and 'Red Dragon' which has the Bible quote attatched "And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth."
The series of images depicts brutal death and are almost glorify the devil, like an early example of satanism.
I like the sense of story behind these pieces and how they are all connected by the quote which is a relevant quote for each painting.

Edvard Munch: The Scream

The Scream has always been one of my favorite images, unlike a lot of paintings it has character and universal appeal. The painting in my opinion depicts one's decent into madness, as the world around the character warps and distorts. The characters in the background are watching on as spectators to the man's emotions which I believe enforces the idea that everything is turning twisted inside the man's point of view. There's an uneasy feel to this painting which is particularly why I like it, as you look at it, you yourself feel the effects of the twisted landscape and begin to understand the screaming character a little more.

Hieronymus Bosch:

I'm not really a fan of mural artwork like Bosch's paintings. Personally I feel like murals disconnect from being personal to the viewer. In Bosch's Hell depictions, as grand as I'm sure it is in person, I don't get that effect from looking at pictures of it. On the other hand, above is an up close photograph of one of his hell murals which I do like. The strange creatures that Bosch has thought up are truly hellish (fittingly) and I think the way they interact with the human characters is in a very dominating way. Clearly the beasts are in charge of Bosch's version of Hell and his depiction of demons is something that has almost no connection with any human like creature.

Clive Barker:

Clive Barker is the creative mind behind the Hellraiser films as well as being an artist himself.
In the Hellraiser films, Barker created an assortment of twisted demonic like creatures called Cenobites, that lived in a hell like world filled with torture and misery. Contrasting with Blake and Bosch's depictions of hell, Barker's hell is a cold, steely blue world filled with chains and spikes. His characters have a reflection of the punk movement, where a lot of them have extreme piercings. His lead character Pinhead, (seen in the first image) is a prime example for this, as his entire skull is decorated with nails driven into it. This imagery captures punk piercing to a nightmarish level where especially on the painting it looks as if the nails form punk like spikey hair. His other paintings are equally ghoulish depicting skulls and nightmarish faces.

Pub Imagery:
Constantine is an everyday bloke, who enjoys drinking beer. So I thought some pub located artwork would be worth a research.

Chris McMorrow
Dublin Pub

What I like about this painting is the strong use of colour and the use of a reflection in the floor. I don't think I've ever painted wet floors before, none that show a reflection and I'm curious to see the challenge in it. I like paintings with puddle reflections because they give a sense of climate and surface to the painting, for example this painting is obviously post-rain so the blues give off a cold and wet environment.

Irish Pub
John P. O'Brien

The lighting in the piece is captured really well. There's a clear source of light from behind the men sat at the table and the way shadows are cast from that are really well done. Everything, down to the beer glasses have a shadow cast and the piece looks almost photo realist. The painting is overall really well done, the composition works well, the lighting works great and the figures all look accurately painted.

Lunch At The Pub II
Jonelle Summerfield

What I like about this painting is the undefined nature of the piece. Obviously this is a pub setting and there's a man sitting, but the quickly painted figure and the incomplete facial features casts mystery to the character. The colours are well used, utilising all the primaries in a subtle sense. Compositionally I think the painting would have benefited from being cropped a little shorter as there's a lack of information in the top of the painting, but as a painting itself, it has good use of colour and texture.

Old Town Bar
Stephen Gardner

What I like about this piece is the angle of the composition, clearly providing an imaginative layout of the bar. The use of lighting is very well done from the daylight outside, the chandelier and the games machines. The poses of the figures are very well painted, the main thing I don't really like about this painting is the superimposed effect the figures have. The figures look as if they were collaged on because of the hard black edges on them, I think this piece would have been more successful if the figures blended into the painting a little more, by replacing the black edges with dark tones.

 

The Tall Tale
Martin Driscoll

The beauty of this piece is the simplicity. The poses, figures and scenery are all painted really well and dramatically and as a painting itself it's very lighthearted. The painting depicts a conversation between old gentlemen where one character looks jokingly bored by the other men's stories. The interesting thing about the position of the main character is that he's way far left and because of this, the viewer's eye is drawn to take the image in from left to right. This is unlike a lot of the art I look at, as they tend to show the main focus around the center or slightly offset.


Smoking Art:
Finally Constantine's main trait is his smoking habit, aside from the brown coat and the blonde hair, Smoking is Constantine's iconic look so I saw how smoking was portrayed by other artists

Fabian Perez:
Fabian Perez is one of my favourite artists. I came across his work on a trip in Manchester when a small corner art shop was selling a tonne of Perez's work. I love the high contrast and use of lighting in his work and I hope to achieve such an effect with my Constantine project

 

Perez's portrayal of smoking is very cool and stylish. Obviously his work reflects upon pulp noir imagery when smoking was a lot classier, but there's a level of grace and respect in his portrayal of smoking. It adds a level of mystery to the character which will bode well with my Constantine work since he's a  very mysterious character himself.

Introspect
Aaron Westerberg
Oil on Linen

 Like Perez's work, Westerberg has a very mysterious and style portrayal of smoking, unlike Perez's work, this piece is a lot colder and less intense. The meaning behind the dark eyes has changed in this piece. With Perez's work, the tone reflects mystery and careless attitude, whilst Westerberg's use of tone is more contemplative. Rather than Perez's stylish poses, Westerberg's character is more collective and has his back against the wall with his hands in his pockets. This tells you that his smoker is less confident than Perez's ones. This reflects on the modern times of smoking where it isn't a style movement anymore and more of an addiction or hobby. The main contrast with this and Perez's piece, is there is no joy in Westerberg's painting, it's more gloomy.

I couldn't find the artist behind this stock photo but I thought as a photograph itself, it's pretty great. The combination of the frail old man and the cigarette is already suggestive to the viewer in grim thoughts of death. The old man isn't a healthy portrayal of smoking and an image of him doing something that would most likely be the death of him is quite edgy. Photographs like this are what we usually see on anti-smoking campaigns but not only that, this is what we see in real life. Young teenagers smoking healthily up until they're middle aged begin to loose the life in their looks and eventually look frail like this man. The pose and expression on the man would make a nice drawing and the tone is quite well lit also.