733 - Unfinished Study In Violence

 

 

I've started work on this piece, but haven't finished it.  You can see enough of the ruff work to figure out where it's going to go. 

 

The two characters are interacting in a violent way.  The other day, my friend Earl was remarking about the nature of violent action in visual art, in that our minds tend to make up a lot more detail than what we see.  Perhaps our empathic response magnifies the effect of violence, maybe that's why violent entertainment can be fun. 

 

Most times, when an artist is depicting a violent scene, the actual point of impact gets omitted.  Certainly there are exceptions to this, but usually the impact tends not to be the most dramatic action pose.  Or more likely, the impact has a very narrow focus of context, so that you perceive just the brutal part but not as much of the surrounding scene.  Think of a picture of a boxer at just the moment that he gets hit by his opponent.  Although you view the physical apex of the struggle, you lose some of the narrative of the anticipation of the hit (the poses that lead to the point of action) and of the follow-thru (the poses that show the result of the action). 

 

Since time and talent are constraints and I do not want to draw every pose of a fight scene, I rely on the most dramatic pose for this situation.  Here I've chosen the follow-thru, since you can see how the action will be resolved.  The anticipatory poses are inferred, and the action of the hit itself is skipped over as being superfluous.  If anything, there are just a limited number of viewing angles for getting a decent composition for the point of impact, while there are more to choose from for the anticpation and follow-thru. 

I'll try to finish this piece tomorrow, and discuss if further then.