Large Rakes Progress painting

As a group we did a large mixed media painting of a Rakes Progress showing the gambling scene. The painting is made up of charcoal on the background to make it dark, to make the background dark we used words such as "disease" and "sex" over and over again to build up the darkness. To get the silhouette of the characters we drew around each other and also made the costume for Tom so that he was the focal point of the piece. Objects such as string were added for the harp and things for the frames of the paintings. The paintings are of Roman emperors, one is perfect and the others have their faces slashed so you cant see them properly. We highlighted the emperor with a golden frame which does stand out on the painting. 

 I took photographs of the painting and edited it in photoshop. I wanted the image to seem surreal and like it was all just a bad dream to Tom when really it was his life. I distorted the image by adding waves and making the figures look ghostly but i think it would have worked better if I had took the yellow tones out first.

The image in negative so that the figures are in black. This is supposed to suggest that they are up to no good and that there is a certain darkness about them. I like the odd spots of blue as they stand out.

Close up of a section of the painting. We used glitter in some of the paint because the glitter represents the cheap nature of the scene as they are in a brothel surrounded by prostitutes and they are gambling. I wish I had done an image about the fire that is starting in the background but none of the characters seem to notice.