He Knows, Doctor, He Knows

I’d had a couple of requests to paint a Star Trek scene and this is what I came up with.  It’s based on a shot near the end of The City At The Edge Of Forever, the greatest ever Star Trek episode.  Left to right it’s Spock, McCoy and Kirk.

The painting follows a standard formula.  It was drawn using the grid method and the characters were covered up with masking fluid while the background was painted.  I did depart from past practices in two places though.  Rather than spattering titanium white, I spattered the characters with masking fluid: the white spots on the characters are blank paper rather than white paint and I think this is a big improvement.  And I’ve used chunky salt crystals rather than table salt for some textural effects – again a big improvement.

The three primaries in the characters were transparent yellow and Prussian blue (because I wanted some greens in there to contrast against the red/orange backgrounds) and quinacridone magenta.  There’s also some Payne’s grey around the edges of the characters.  The background was built up gradually in layers, using raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber, light red and Prussian blue.  The Prussian blue worked out really well and might have been a small touch of genius.  And there is some quinacridone magenta in the curtain on the right and some cadmium yellow in the curtain rings (as I needed an opaque yellow).

Good points about the painting are the background (where the layering worked out well) and Spock (especially his textures).  McCoy, though, refused to react to the salt crystals and Kirk is a bit too brightly coloured compared to the other two.  I do like, though, how I’ve captured The Shat in a frozen, wooden looking pose.  And I could claim that the abstract silhouettes capture the characters as they’re being transported back to the Enterprise (or, more accurately, back to the original planet by the Guardian Of Forever).  Overall, it’s just about acceptable.

Well, I thought it was at the time and put it in the shop window but have since taken it down.