Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

So this is my fifth and probably not final blog post about "sorta master copies". The painting I'm going to talk about this week is actually one that I completed before I tackled the Peter Griffin painting I wrote about last week. It is this painting of Morty from Rick and Morty. As I've done in the past, I used the same initial sketch that I used for the version of Morty that I painted last year. Full disclosure: I wasn't thrilled with my first painting of Morty. I wanted to give him some three dimensionality and make him look sorta, but not really 'real'. I think I kind of got there, but there was definitely room for improvement.

Morty, oil on canvas, 2021.

The problem with Morty, is that he along with all of the characters from Rick and Morty, has a very simple character design. Now I actually love simplicity in cartoon characters. I mean, my favourite characters of all time are Looney Tunes characters and they are actually not all that simple–they are beautifully designed and rather complex. But I also really appreciate how much much emotion can be conveyed with simple character design. All of this goes back to Charles M. Schultz and his Peanuts characters, of course. And Schultz was the master of it, at least until Bill Watterson came along. Note to self–should I do paintings of Calvin and Hobbes? I think that has to happen! Anyway, as usual in this blog, I digress…
 
So what is my assessment of my own work on creating cartoon paintings that kinda, sorta look like “old master paintings”. Well, in the case of Hank, I feel like it worked pretty well. Of all the characters I've chosen to do so far, Hank is the closest to what an actual human looks like, so creating believable contours of the face was not as difficult as it was on the other two. I also think Peter worked pretty well, at least partly because of the dramatic lighting. Overall I”m pretty happy with it.

In the case of Morty, I do think I improved on the original painting I did last year. There is definitely more depth, and the colours work pretty well. But because of the simplicity of his character design, I find the contours really hard to figure out. But the flesh tones are more believable than the old painting and it also just looks more like an oil painting. And that is really the goal of doing these experiments. To make them unquestionably look like oil paintings.
 
So I guess now I have to ask myself: how can I push this further? I suppose the most obvious answer is to keep practicing and copying the old masters. And I probably need to look at other contemporary artists who do the same. I'll start by looking at more Dave Pollot for sure. But if you, dear reader(s) know of any others, let me know! Other than I want to get back to the roots of my Cuboweirdism work and add more abstract flat shapes into my paintings and see how they work with the 'old master' look. I have ideas! Stay tuned!