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Painting by Numbers

111Fighting Few progressive.jpg (225979 bytes)
"Fighting Few"

This one must be the only Star Wars painting I've done that is actually in space. A bit of a surprise to me when I think of Star Wars paintings: because to me Star Wars paintings are space and spaceships; when I think of childhood, Star Wars and Ralph McQuarrie's paintings. 

1. Is the start of the painting. In the early days of the production of Episode III there wasn't much info about and I came across these photos of a new toy; a Jedi Starfighter modified by Anakin. I made the leap that this might be in Episode III, but of course it wasn't. So I guess this is not so much an Episode III painting as an Episode II & 1/2, like the toy.

2. Must be the photo used as the base of Anakin. I say must because I don't actually remember for sure. This had been printed out for use on another painting so I assume this would be the one used since the similarity is obvious.

3. Are a few of the sketches. You can see here I was wondering if they might use a version of the Clone Pilot's helmets in ROTS; to move the transition from old trilogy to new a bit further. In the end that is what they did, but Anakin and Obi-Wan didn't ware them. The basic idea for the painting is decided with the positioning of the ship and pilot, all that needed to be done was work out the best composition.

4. With this one you can see the compositions tried out. There isn't a huge degree of variation but I still needed to find the best balance.

4a. Is the final composition with the addition of the two planets.

5. Is the final state of the picture. The addition of the two planets makes the composition work. The placement of the small crescent planet behind Anakin draws your eye and creates a real feeling of depth and perspective without actually any depth or perspective in the painting on that flat background. I think I got this idea from a McQuarrie painting; a picture of a more or less side-on Star Destroyer and, I think, two planets. I can't find a file of that painting so that's why it isn't included here. The exhausts of the Starfighters are a bit cartoonish - probably caused by my use of black for the background, which at this stage I never used, and the problems of blending colors with that in oils, if you want to keep the colors pure - but overall the painting works well.

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