Green Arrow Research

For my work into Green Arrow, my dissection of the character has taken me to Robin Hood roots, since the character is primarily based on him. I've been watching a variety of Robin Hood films to see what ideas film makers have taken to the character and how he is presented.

'The Adventures of Robin Hood' - 1938

The most well known of the Robin Hood films, this cinematic representation depicts Errol Flynn as the leading role, bringing swashbuckling charisma and  joy to the character. The film has a very bright colour filter and looks similar to that of The Wizard of Oz, the character wears a feather cap, green tights and brown, green and red theatrical costumes. For my depiction of Green Arrow, any influence I take from this will have to be adapted for a modern day, more appropriate environment.

'Robin Hood' - 2010

The latest iteration of the Robin Hood films is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Russel Crowe as the lead. The film is something of a prequel to the stories of Robin Hood but more so than that a close historical re-telling of the story in a mature manor. Unlike the 30's Robin Hood film, this depiction is far duller and removes most of the joy from the story. The film is a more relevant and believable transcription of the tale, whilst at the same time remaining a piece of fiction. The costume wore in this film consists of a brown leather hood, chain mail and armour and dulled grey and green wool fabric. This Robin Hood looks fitting to the period but not iconic like the fable, my depiction for Green Arrow needs to take the aesthetics of this design, but apply them to an iconic and recognizable costume.

I've also been reading Mike Grell's run on Green Arrow, starting with Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters.

This story is a re-invention of the character, where he's reached the age of 43 and goes back to traditional routes of heroism by trading his trick arrows for traditional arrows because he has become too comfortable relying on them, wearing a hooded costume for practicality and never being referred to as Green Arrow. I've enjoyed the story and I think a lot of my influence on the character is going to come from this depiction. As a side note the artwork in the book is outstanding as a mixture of illustrations and painted panels.

To begin my research, I first looked at Painted depictions of Robin Hood, a lot of what I found was very folk art-like and illustrative but I did manage to find some example of what I was looking for.

Robin Hood and Maid Marian - James Edwin McConnell

 After seeing more of McConnell's work, his style is very similar to that of Norman Rockwell or Alex Ross, This painting is visually different to his other work, much more muddy and less glorified. The colour palette is something I quite like, it's very bold but not colourful and very toned down and like I mentioned muddy. The contrasts in the lighting of the characters is quite well done as it covers most of Robin Hood's face to conceal a sense of mystery, whilst Maid Marian's face is shown fully lit as she represents the lighter side of Robin's personality.

Howard David Johnson

  Howard David Johnson is a fantasy illustrator whose work is based around fairy tales, mythology and warriors. This piece, based on Robin Hood and his Merry Men, is a vibrant painting familiar to the 30's Robin Hood film. Not only is the colour strong and the figures life like, the depth of the characters works really well and the use of the trees to break in between figures is an interesting technique. My main issue with the piece is the use of the colour green, the artist has tried to break it up by placing flowers and red garments, but to me the green is too overpowering and I think this is something I need to be careful about with my final pieces.

Manchester Trip:
Last week as a birthday present I visited Manchester for a few days to do some site-seeing and visit some art galleries. Amongst some of the work I found a few were relevant to my Green Arrow work.

Arthur Hughs - Ophelia

What drew me to this piece was, after watching the 30's Robin Hood, the text along with the painting in a similar style to how it was used in the film to set up the story. Reading about the artist, he was only 19 when he painted this and he uses the same kind of ideas as me but substitutes comic book characters for Shakespearean ones. I've been thinking about adding text to my Green Arrow painting so this might be something to look into.

William Frederick Yeames - Prince Arthur and Hubert de Burgh

 Naturally I was drawn to this painting for the hooded figure in the painting. I think the angles in this piece work really well for simplicity purposes. Personally there are some blank areas in the background that I would have painted something in or cropped the painting down a little. The poses are really interesting in the piece as there's a lot of character in the way both figures are interacting. In terms of my Green Arrow work, I may take some ideas from how the hood is portrayed in this piece and at least painting technique from it.

William Holman Hunt - The Hireling Shepherd

 Personally I don't like this painting, I think it looks too much like something you'd see on a biscuit tin in my own opinion. Ridiculous as it sounds the only thing I like about this painting is how the grass is painted. When you look at the piece up close, the grass is simply many layers of monotone paint strokes. Because this repetitive nature is random and there's so much of it, the grass works and looks believable, I may have to paint grass in one of my Green Arrow painting so I'll probably do it like this artist has.

Andrew McCallum - Oak Tree's in Sherwood Forest

Funnily enough, I came across this painting of Sherwood Forest whilst in Manchester Art Gallery. The artist McCallum is credited for his tree painting skills and you can see yourself why. The great thing about this composition is it demonstrates his ability to paint both dead trees and leaved trees. Both are well painted and textured really well. The grass has a mossy texture which works perfectly, the leaved tree has an equally brilliant texture and the leafless trees are well detailed and painted also. Hopefully I'll produce a similar background for my Green Arrow painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sir George Clausen - Portrait of a girl's head

  This piece I like mainly for the use of the background and the portrait. The portrait of the woman is painted very skillfully and delicately whilst the background is a random collection of green paint strokes. This is an interesting way of painting a quick background to make the foreground stand out more and I might use this technique in my work.

John Everett Millais - Winter Fuel

This was one of my favorite paintings in the gallery, there was so much detail and texture put into this piece by Millais that when you look at it from a distance it looks fantastically painted, but when you look closer there is so much technique going on to create these effects.

 This is a close up portion of the tree trunk, as you can see thick rough paint strokes have been used to give off the rough texture of the wood and delicately painted to form a smooth image.

 

 This is a close up of the brambles where a thin brush has been used to paint each individual branch of different shades of brown. Some of the brush strokes aren't even complete as some of them are dry brushed which shows how a large scale painting hides the missing areas because your eye fills them in.

Alexander Nasmyth - Loch Doon, Ayrshire

 

This piece is another woodland painting that I though was very well painted. There is a really nicely painted lake in this piece which captures both reflection and water texture perfectly, I know from experience water is difficult to paint. I don't know if I'll use water in my FMP work so that part isn't so relevant, but can't go without acknowledgement. The woodland area is painted really well, the lighting is well done, as it makes sense for the trees to be blocking out a lot of light due to the leaves. There is a lot of detail in the tree branches and I'm seeing that this is the key to painting trees, detail and texture.

Henry Moore - Arran (Across Kilbrannan Sound)

This painting reminded me of the island that Green Arrow was first shipwrecked to, I've been thinking of painting the character on the island as well as in present day so this is an interesting painting for inspiration. Now obviously I can't go out and paint or photograph and island (or at least without difficulty) and I'm more of a portrait painter than landscape, so I won't be doing any work like this for my FMP, but just the image itself reminded me of the character, so there may be some ideas I can pull from this painting, for example the way the sea is painted is quite interesting. Unlike most water paintings I've seen, this one depicts waves as a rough texture and with a thick application of paint to show texture, depth, lighting and detail.