| | Thank you, Bob and Landon.
William, no offense taken if you don't get it. Landon hit it, it's a stylistic choice to make the people without features, its more iconic than representational. A quick lesson in cartoon dynamics: less features equals more identification for the viewer to project themselves into the scene. My style is more about the idea than the actual objects represented, abstract in the manner Ayn Rand discussed in ROMANTIC MANIFESTO: reality boiled down to the essence. I am not painting certain people dancing; I am painting the spirit dancing.
As for the musical notes, well...music is difficult to represent visually, if we're talking about sound itself. Notation is not music; notation is a translation of sound into symbols. I could have done these without notations, but without the reference, it would be difficult to say the theme is music. So I reluctanly use notations, but I stylize them to my taste, some of the notes I use in my series are more traditional than others, but because I got bored I did my experimented with them. Again, I am inspired by art deco and comic books and that plays a part. For instance, yes, the lighting is not "correct" in a piece like CONTRAPUNTAL but it's not the concern, because it's a fantasy piece. The setting is vaguely suggested as outer space, but it's really "inner space", the fantasies in my mind. If I were to paint a piece like that realistically, it simply would not work. It's more graphic design than representational. It's about the idea of music elating the spirit, not the relation of objects in reality.
This piece, however, is not about music (no notes) but about the effects of Katrina and the choices concerning benevolence and self-preservation. It is technically flawed, even for a cartoony style, but this is not a piece I am doing commercially, or even for fun; it's how I work out issues in my head. So I concentrated less on making it pretty or correct and more on the interplay of the title.
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Hazards and Benefits of Benevolence
