Barry Lyndon

So I've got another Kubrick piece. The long, beautiful, dull, tragic Barry Lyndon. Barry Lyndon is a period piece (mostly in the 1770's) about a young lower class Irish man's ascent to and eventual fall from aristocracy. It is clear from the outset that this movie is heavily influenced by painting from the time.

I mean just look at this still from the movie. So clearly composed as a painting. This is a little more Caravaggio than most of the film, which Kubrick has said is made to look more contemporary to artists like Watteau and Hogarth (apologies for the awful color on the Hogarth) 

The thing I really did enjoy about this movie though was the subtle undermining a lot of the normal period drama beats. Kubrick subverts the whole thing with a deeply ironic narrator and characteristic grimness. These elements reveal the artifice behind the lavish settings and characters to expose a real human tragedy.

So I made a lot of sketches, but many of them stuck pretty close to things I've seen a lot or these types of paintings. Stuff that would work, but didn't necessarily betray the underlying tone of the movie. I decided to subjugate that approach with more of my own interests and tendencies and came up with this.

This idea did a better job framing the classical painting composition within a more modern discomforting treatment. It suited the tone of the film much better. And apart from a few little tweaks with color and composition I stuck pretty close to this. I spent forever drawing that type perfectly, but then abandoned that for the stand-in type I did with a dip pen that's in the final. Too many words.