Hey everyone!
It feels good to be back and working hard on our weekly themes again. Now that the holidays are over, it’s certainly nice to have some more focus on productive things. This week, we worked on a theme which asked us to draw our Favourite Movie Scene. Since it is such a personal choice, there were so many possibilities!
Vicki’s Piece
Materials: ProMarkers, WaterColours, Pencil
I have so many movies that are close to my heart, and are visually stunning too. It was a hard choice for me to settle upon one, so I decided to go for a movie that I watched recently. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a beautiful movie with a wonderful message which is really important to me.
The tone throughout the movie is wistfully playful, combined with the epic visuals and interesting characters. Ben Stiller really blew me away with this too, he was wonderful in the role and had the right level of humour and sincerity.
This, to me, is one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie – where he takes one of the biggest plunges and faces a fear head-on. The camera work is amazing, each shot is perfectly arranged to capture the build up of his courage through to the realisation that he has done it. Combined with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, it is really an epic scene.
I hope that I did the scene justice with my piece. I took a little creative leeway with the background to include the essence of the scene – with his love interest playing the guitar. But the main focus was him, and his disbelief and adrenaline. I feel like I’ve started to find myself again artistically – my past few pieces were experimental or too simple – but these mediums are the ones that some of my best work has come out of so I’ll stick with them and keep pushing my skills further.
Film: The Three Musketeers (2011, director: Paul W. S. Anderson)
Su says; I accidentally caught this film on a random channel and although it didn’t perform too well at the box office, I really liked its unique take on the age-old Three Musketeers story.
This week’s theme was particularly insightful as it allowed me to deconstruct the composition of the frame, seeing how integral the halfway marks are especially in this film where a lot of symmetry is employed.
I selected a scene with indoor and outdoor establishing shots and character close ups, showcasing the costume and decor.
The scene is as follows: the bishop of france and a spy plot treason before an important visit by a British dignitary. The stately manner is shown from afar with hundreds of troops in attendance. The bishop and young king of France await atop the balcony for the arrival of the Duke of Buckingham. The three musketeers also wait, only to see a looming shadow of Buckingham’s giant air ship!
I used Promarker, fineliner, colouring pencils and a dab of paint.
Bonus: Christoph Waltz!
Materials: graphite, watercolor, Prismacolor pencil, & guache
Film: The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Maryann says:
When I heard that the challenge this week was movie scenes, I immediately started thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson films. PTA has such a unique vision and method of storytelling, and I think that each of his movies is so absolutely fine-tuned visually. Narrowing down which source material to draw from was really hard because his movies are all so beautiful, but in the end I chose The Master. My drawing is made up of four different film stills (rather than a storyboard for a long scene).
I really had fun exploring different characters, their relationships in the frame, and how each still interacted with each other in the larger composition of the full drawing. I also had a ton of fun playing with color in this drawing, something that I haven’t done a whole lot for With Two Sugars.
If I could change something about it, I only wish I could find sharper-tipped colored pencils to use. For some reason whenever I sharpened any of my pencils, the “lead” would break immediately and I could never maintain a sharp enough point to make the fine detail lines I wanted! I have to find a new or different material for future drawings of this nature…
Lastly, if you haven’t seen The Master, I highly recommend it! Or, if you haven’t seen a Paul Thomas Anderson film at all, perhaps start with his other masterpiece Boogie Nights and go from there.
That’s all for this theme – check back on the weekend for our new pieces when we upload on Sunday!
With Two Sugars, Please 