Monday, June 8, 2015

"Big Eyes"

   I finally finished my first foray into oil painting. I had just watched Big Eyes and thought, I need to mimic that. I was about to start a zombie portrait in oil, but I postponed it and launched into my Margaret Keane imitation. I didn’t notice oil being so much different to work with than watercolor…I mean, stylistically, one generally goes for the pale, delicate look in watercolor, but I’ve tended to lay the stuff on rather thick, like an acrylic or oil, I guess. I approached this ‘Big Eyes’ rather like I did the character portraits I did for January’s A Hole in the Ice blog tour on the A P Book Club,which I painted with watercolor. I did use more watery washes on those ones, which caused problems with their complexions. I didn’t experiment too much with ‘Big Eyes.’ I did a little blending here and there but didn’t go crazy.
   And now a few words about Big Eyes.
  I’m a huge fan of Tim Burton and his latest film did not disappoint. It was a little different than his usual movie, but still had that distinctive Burton flavor. The way he puts films together is just phenomenal. The actors were amazing, Amy Adams is so good and Christophe Waltz was darkly fascinating, bringing to life that monstrous yet charming character (his smile is just too creepy, even when he was being nice, but other than that, stellar job). My favorites were Terence Stamp as the art critic (by the way I totally agree with what he said about art, although I also like the Big Eye paintings) and the judge.
   It was also a lovely period film. Five stars!