Bedtime

Bedtime

Bed Time - Final Painting

Monoprint planning pieces

   This piece I spent a long time planning and practicing before actually painting it. It is larger than anything I'd done before and I expected it to take me a term once the paintbrush touched canvas. In fact it took barely a month.
  My objective was to get a mood and atmosphere that I could convey to the viewer. Whenever there is a adult standing over a child on the floor people are inevitably going to assume that it is a sinister subject matter. Two elements I thought were important in order for the painting to convey humour and not fear were:
1) The mans open hands, not threatening and relaxed. Its an every day routing event and he is not angry.
2)The boy need to look angry and put out, not scared. He's positioned himself against the radiator for comfort.
  As for composition I decided to divide the painting in two. The kitchen dominated half of the canvas, and the stairs the other one. The light from the kitchen outlines the figures and emphasizes the subject of the argument: the boy wants to be in the kitchen and the painting is through the boys eyes. He's attempting to convince the adult figure to let him stay up after his bed time, the toes highlighted by the kitchen light indicative of his attempts. Yet the adult is refusing and his shadow is preventing Joshua to be fully enveloped by the kitchen's light. The stairs are painted at an incorrect angle, the steepness and height exaggerated, the tone the darkest in the painting to suggest how been forced to go to bed and expelled from the adult's activity down stairs seems to a child.
  I am proud of a lot in this piece but people have still found it sinister. They don't make the same associations that I, and the people that know my family, do. I know that my father is mocking Joshua, and I know that Joshua is throwing a massive tantrum and will refuse to move from the radiator no matter how badly dad mocks him. He chose this position so that he could remain comfortable while refusing to move. But guests have still seen a posible violent scene which means I am not embuing enough humour and characters in my work.
  On a technical note the stairs are too glossy and you can only see them in a certain light, in most they are not visible and reflect too much light.