- - my last entry for 2006?
The Beatles :: 2006
This will officially be my last completed piece for 2006....
The weekend after my birthday, I sadly decided not use the free tickets I received to see The Beatles' tribute band playing at a venue two hours from my home. Instead, I played my own Beatles' tribute. I took the guitars in my collection and I set up my camera and tripod and played John, Paul and George. Wooden baking spoons had to do for Ringo's drumsticks. A turtleneck for John. A tight black T-shirt like Another Girl scene in HELP! for Paul. Dress shirt and skinny black tie for Ringo. All denim for George. Standing in front of the dilapitated apple house--that will probably not make it through another winter--that sits on the borderline of my neighbor's yard. I set up this pose.
Assembling these images with some existing sketches of The Beatles, I began my digital collage. It crudely started out like this:
and ended up like this:
I printed this out on heavy stock drawing paper and began to focus initially on the Lennon portrait as needed to scan that into this portrait commission:
When this was completed, I returned to my Beatles portrait. The pace moved slowly as this just before Christmas--and well, it's a busy time of the year. I received a book for Christmas (I reviewed it in my previous post). Even though my portrait was completed or well on it's way to completion before I read and finished this book, I found some interesting items that in a way revealed themselves in this portrait....
One thing I noticed before I read the book was "this pose", "this line-up"--with John, Paul, Ringo and George--was nowhere readily found on any album or more-or-less "official" photo. (the closest is Beatles' 65's main image "backwards") I thought that was kind of odd.
The book revealed that John and Paul were truly the creative leaders and the closest of friends in The Beatles. And surprising to me, the author--Geoff Emerick--said that Paul was the real "leader" of the band when it came to music and recording and composing. I found that interesting when I realized I had clearly separated Paul from the others in my color treatment and focal point of him being the only Beatle to look at the viewer straight-on. Especially in comparison to Lennon, who is truly the one in my portrait not make any eye contact with the viewer. This is further underlined in my "weird-coincidence" category when Emerick talked about all the Lennon insecurities.
Ringo and George--according to the book--were treated often as very "secondary" members of the band. Paul was often giving them advice and direction on drumming and lead guitar playing. Later in The Beatles career, he would sometimes play their parts for the records. This particularly annoyed George who seemed to be The Beatle most removed from the others. Is that why I subconsciously drew him on the end in a completely different color scheme than all the others? John would rarely take sides and if he did it was with Paul. Paul and John never really gave George much support in his songwriting. In fact, often the opposite.
So, this was a very interesting piece to work on. And almost as much fun to find all these "hidden secrets" in it's subconscious composition. It's very appropriately an exciting piece to be my last piece of 2006!
