Featured Artists-Craig Burt Collection

Painting by Numbers

"D Day"

This one is 'D Day' - 'D' as in dark, a dark day for the Jedi. 

Those with a keen eye may notice a difference in the look of the painting - the way its painted. That's because it's an acrylic painting, not oils, which almost all my paintings are. Of the paintings in this gallery only a about four are acrylics.

It is obviously an interpretation of the confrontation between Palpatine, Mace and Anakin. I can't remember really how much was known about the scene at the time it was painted, but, it's obvious I went with Mace getting a little bit of a shock.

1. Is the start of the painting - the pose of Anakin. For whatever reason that pose gave me the basic structure of the painting straight away - Anakin avoiding a lunge from Mace.

1a. Is the face of Mace used as the basis for the picture.

2.Are the first sketches of the painting. Not much was needed to resolve the figures. You can see basically Mace's pose pretty finalized in the upper left corner, even though it's small. 

2a. Are a bunch of composition sketches tried. That involved moving the background around to try and find an appealing composition balance. You can also see that I tried changing the angel of Mace's saber. In the end I went back to the original angle of the first sketch because it provides a more dramatic sense of movement and implied more of a threat to Anakin.

2b. Is the inspiration for the ceiling of the room. For those who don't know it's from a scene on Bespin in the Empire Strikes Back. At the time I didn't think I had a picture of the ceiling of Palatine's office, but, much later researching another painting I discovered I did - must have missed it before. 

3. Is a scan of the painting 3/4 finished. There isn't much difference between it and the final picture, apart from finishing details and a fold in Mace's cloak - near the left bottom corner. At the time I felt that shadow/fold added a bit too much weight to that corner and provided a visual distraction of movement in that direction.

4. Is the final painting. The changing of Anakin's proportion from the photo to a more massive body gives an impression of his power and adds weight to him. That weight also implies a level of immobility also - immobility of mind and action, not knowing which is the right course of action in the situation.

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