KISHAN THAKRAR
A LEVEL ART PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO
John Martin - Artist Study
John Martin
As a continuation of finding painters who used atmosphere in their paintings, I found that John Martin's apocalyptic works seemed to fit quite well. A lot of his paintings allude to biblical events; mainly stories of destruction and violence. The use of light, therefore, is not only important in what the viewer sees, but also in conveying the messages from these biblical references. The light signifies power, with most of his paintings featuring light juxtaposed against darker shadows below. The majority also have a large field of view rather than a close up view focussing on smaller details, so that the vast scale of these events is noted by the viewer. This is also where the atmosphere helps; it creates a sense of depth in the paintings, similar to its effect in photography, to exaggerate and enhance the magnitude of the image. In the above painting, atmosphere is used to guide the reader towards the interest in the image, by desaturating and obscuring less interesting parts. Further into the distance, the colours become less vivid and more stagnant. This enhances the depth and the atmospheric perspective. These techniques would also be easier to do in Photoshop than with paints.
Another of his works I particularly liked was 'Clytie', pictured below, painted in 1814. According to this website, "The nymph Clytie is shown wandering through an idyllic landscape after falling in love with the sun god Apollo, as told in an ancient myth. According to the story, Apollo then turned her into a sunflower - which moves its head to face the sun." Also a vast landscape; the depth is explored again through use of light and colour. An additional feature of Martin's which I like is how often in his paintings there is a lack of straight lines and regular shapes. Instead, trees are twisted, cliffs distorted and clouds reaching out over the skies, which gives it a sense of surrealism. It almost seems as if this personifies the scenery, as if they are responding to what is going on in the painting.
When creating photorealistic atmospheric montages, some of the techniques Martin uses can be translated onto digital methods and will be useful in created more interesting images. I can distort objects individually to give them life, and add atmosphere into the distance, in addition to desaturating the background. Also giving time to look at how the sky appears can be quite valuable, as the sky can make a big difference depending on how interesting it is. Changing the sky would also mean making sure the foreground objects are reacting to the light appropriately - for example if the sun is very red, the trees would need to capture some of that red light on some of the leaves. If the sun is low, then concentrating on the shadows will also help acheive realism.
