My 3rd painting, Acrylic on Canvas, this one is my biggest so far at 18" X 36". I actually found it too big to work with, and I went with a rendering effect on the shadows (and shadows of shadows) which was painfully time consuming. It looks pretty cool up close, very textural, but the process is something I will likely avoid in the future.
As you can see, the small detailed (and controlled) brush strokes are meticulously placed everywhere. I wanted the painting to look flat with regard to colors, like a click and fill Photoshop style look, very clean looking with solid and flat textureless colors, so the little rendered details were very difficult to apply (for me) as they are not a brush effect but a solid color tone. I started experimenting with a 'looser' paint style on the gun only.
This approach was effective in giving the gun a gleam, and a metallic feel without straying to far from my 'cartoony' comfort zone. Other than clouds this part represents some of my drybrushing experimentation, and a 3 or 4 tone effect on the metal of the gun. I kept highlights and reflective highlights on some of the details to really try to sell the 'metal'ness of it all.
As you can see I also tried a frenetic outline around the image, sort of a boiling line effect. I have not tried to do this type of styling since, but as an experiment it had a cool effect that I may bring back in a future piece.
The inspiration behind this piece was the trial of the RCMP officers who had tasered Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at a Vancouver airport. Ever since the Maher Arar rendering and torture incident I've been disillusioned with our Federal Police force, and I was ashamed as the details came out throughout the internal investigation into Mr. Dziekanski's brutal death. The painting has nothing to do with either embarrasment, I just had the RCMP on my mind, and their uniforms are really neat. This piece took about 76 hours to complete, and I was pretty glad to be done with it when I finished.
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