Featured Artists-Craig Burt Collection

Painting by Numbers

"Past and Present"

This one is the painting chosen by our Jedi Power for the 'icon' link image for the painting gallery at Galactic Voyage.

1. Is, or, is not the start of the painting, depending on your perspective. This picture is from a 1996 Cinescape magazine article on the resurgence of Star Wars in novel form; If you can't make it out, it's a drawing of Darth Vader sitting in the candlelight reading.

Now go to 2003. With the magazine forgotten, I've had an idea to do a painting with Vader in the dark looking at a hologram of Padmé, which I've never got around to doing. Then I get an email from Sandra Mosch the webmaster of http://www.thenextamidala.com/ - who I've sent some paintings too - suggesting much the same idea. I also think I had someone else email the same idea when talking about one of my paintings; but I can't remember who. Obviously, looking back, the painting idea came from the magazine - but not consciously. Everything in human society is built on something else; every painting, story, invention, consciously or not. Did Sandra or the other emailer see the same magazine? Don't know, didn't ask them. All this makes me wonder who gets the credit for the painting, George Lucas probably.

2. The first couple of sketches were drawn from a different angle than the finished painting. The first sketch looks to be based on the scene with Luke on Dagobah, by the pose. The second looks fine, but I think they were a bit too 'human'; the scene needed to be more rigid or harsh for Vader.

3. Has the final composition. The more formal composition suits the mechanical/stiff nature of Vader, with the side-on pose and straight lines and angles.

4. Would be, I think, the only side-on image I had of Hayden to use. 

5. Is what the hologram of Padmé was based on.

6. Is the end point of this long road; the final painting. Overall I like the picture, though it could be painted a bit better. The stiff nature of the composition does let you focus on the remaining visible human parts of Vader, at the same time as giving the impression of encumbrance of the mechanical. The classical Star Wars lights in a simple horizontal line function almost as prison bars subconsciously.

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