All Summer in a Day – Ray Bradbury
Posted: February 18, 2015 Filed under: subject | Tags: all summer in a day, illustration, oil paint, Ray Bradbury, Sci-fi, short story 1 Comment
In this story a class of school children on Venus wait for the short period of time where it stops raining and the sun comes out. The one girl who has seen the sunshine before is locked in the cupboard by the class and misses the event. The picture is from her point of view inside the cupboard with a crack of light shining underneath the door. I think this helps the viewer to empathise with the girl. There is a lot not shown in this picture so most of the sci-fi elements are left to the readers imagination.
A Sound of Thunder – Ray Bradbury
Posted: February 18, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A Sound of Thunder, Butterfly effect, illustration, literature, oil paint, Playboy, Ray Bradbury, short story Leave a comment
Bradbury’s short story centres on a man who pays a time travelling hunting company to go back and kill a t-rex. In order not to alter the present/future they must not alter anything in the past and only kill dinosaurs that are just about to die. To avoid tampering with the world they walk on a floating walkway above the jungle floor which is shown here in my image. I find the White path contrasts nicely with the jungle, although maybe it could have been smoother to exaggerate this. The arcing path evocative of the idea of time travel, looping back and forth. The unseen destination is representative of the unknown present/future that they return to, but this may have worked better if the picture was flipped so the path went back then forwards. I have scratched into the picture to create the texture of the ferns, which I think was a much easier way of doing it.
There Will Come Soft Rains – Ray Bradbury
Posted: February 18, 2015 Filed under: subject | Tags: illustration, literature, oil paint, Ray Bradbury, Sci-fi, short story, The Martian Chronicles, There Will Come Soft Rains Leave a comment
In the story a futuristic house goes about its daily routine; making breakfast, hoovering, ect. The people are long gone, so it is just this house functioning for no real reason. A fire starts in the house and it starts to burn down. In the text it mentioned a Picasso burning, at the time of painting this I was still writing my dissertation on Cubism. I thought to use Picasso’s study of Horta, which features buildings as the subject, which look like futuristic geometric structures.
There were a few problems with paining this, the first being copying the original painting while also imposing the alteration in colour that being next to a large fire would cause. Painting flames also proved to be quite tricky, they don’t look very effective. what to do beneath the line of flames was a bit of a conundrum, I kept it simple and made a subtle allusion to the frame of the canvas. I think the white marks to show the sweating and warping paint are quite effective, the smoke marks running upwards also look ok. I think the original painting does get a bit lost with half of it missing and other elements laid on top.
matt beese 
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