Bringing "A Christmas Carol" to Life

In a previous blog I talked about the various trials and tribulations I had with venues for my Christmas Carol exhibition.  Now I'd like to delve more into the creative process behind the actual paintings.  

*A quick note: the paintings won't be numbered in order because the original six-painting series was expanded with the insertion of four new ones into the mix the next year.

Back in 2013 when I started the series, I decided I wanted to do relatively large canvases of uniform size that could accommodate a lot of detail.  I settled on 30 by 40 inches, which, based on the space available at my first venue, would mean a series of six paintings. 

So how best to represent the story using only six images?  I confess I had never actual read the original Christmas Carol book...not much of a book, actually...more of a longish short story it turns out.  So job one was to read it, sans preconceived ideas as much as possible, and allow whatever images to form in my head based on the words alone.  Most of my familiarity with the story had come from the classic 1951 British film starring the incomparable Alistair Sim.  I've watched that movie faithfully every Christmas for the past 40 years at least. 

The breakdown was relatively straightforward.  There are four prominent ghosts in the story, so naturally each one would get a painting.  Then there's basically two Scrooges: the "before" miserable miserly one, and the reformed happy "after" one.  So the six paintings would be as follows: "Before" Scrooge, Marley's Ghost,  The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, the Ghost of Christmas Future, and "Redeemed" Scrooge. 

Painting 1: Meet Ebenezer Scrooge

This one was relatively easy conceptually.  All it really needed to accomplish was to set the stage and introduce the main character.  I've always enjoyed Victorian streetscapes, so it was quite a pleasure to conceive of the various elements of the background...though I did set a precedent for level of detail that would come back to haunt later.  As for the man himself, he's something of an amalgam of previous Scrooge incarnations.  There isn't that much in the way of talking points in terms of my fairly conventional interpretation of him, but his placement in the scene has some significance.  He is literally on the fringes of the scene, as far from his fellow humans as possible.  And his placement on the left side is significant.  One thing I learned from film class is that western societies tend to frame villains on the left and heroes on the right in visual media.  I've heard it explained that this is because as westerners we read from left to right, and our eyes tend to come to rest on whatever is on the right side, thus making it the ideal spot to place an heroic figure, which, at this stage of the story, Scrooge clearly is not. 

Painting 2: Marley's Ghost

This was actually my first time painting a transparent ghost.  So I made sure to place a lot of solid lines and patterns behind him to highlight his transparency.  First I painted the background outside the door...the window, the railing, and the corner molding.  Next I gradually added Marley on top, using very watered-down acrylics, so that the background would still show through him.  I tried to define him as minimally as possible, saving the more opaque paint for his edges and keeping his middle more see-through.  One other small note: the inclusion of a spilled bowl of porridge and spoon on the floor to imply Scrooge's strong reaction seconds earlier to this ghostly visitation. 

Painting 3: The Ghost of Christmas Past

Of the three 'Christmas' ghosts, this is the one that in my opinion is most open to interpretation.  The movie's portrayal is of a gentle old man with long white hair and robe.  In the book it is something of a nebulous shape-shifter of indeterminate gender...at times with multiple additonal limbs appearing and disappearing.  It also has a candle atop its head that is eventually snuffed when the ghost's time is done.  I ultimately settled on this somewhat flowing, feminine form.  Of the ten paintings, this was the first one where the original sold (the other is "Meet Ebenezer Scrooge"), and now it resides in a dining room with a majestic view of a fjord in Norway.

Painting 6: The Ghost of Christmas Present

I've seemingly jumped ahead a couple of paintings because this one was part of the original series (before it was expanded in 2014).  

One of the benefits of tackling a project of this nature is that you end up painting things you might not otherwise touch.  Case in point the various items...food...presents...instruments...that surround the Ghost of Christmas Present and constitute essentially a mini still life.  But by far the biggest challenge with this one was the fireplace flames.  They needed to be both warm and bright, but when I added orange/yellow to the paint for warmth the flames lost luminance, and when I added white for brightness, they lost colour saturation.  I simply couldn't get a happy mix of paint that served both purposes, so I decided to try it in two passes...first I painted the flames and coals in pure bright white.  Once that had dried I took a very water orange-yellow wash and tinted the white.  The colour ended up being quite strong yet didn't compromise the brightness of the white.  I've since applied this technique in other paintings that require "lit" elements, like neon signs, where things have to be both bright and colourful.  One other quick note: the Ghost's fur coat is actually green as per the Dickens story.  I always assumed it was red from watching the black and white film.  

Painting 9: Scrooge's Reckoning

The first painting I completed of the set, which is no surprise since I'm a big fan of spooky things (see previous blog post "Scared for Life").  There's not a lot to say about the technical side of this one, but for sure one of my influences was a similar scene from a beloved Viewmaster set of the Christmas Carol, which I poured over many times as a youngster.  

From Viewmaster's A Christmas Carol

Painting 10: Scrooge Redeemed

The original six finished with this piece, showing the redeemed, happy Scrooge brightening up the town.  The colour palette has lifted for this one, 'in keeping with the situation' to quote Mrs. Dilber, the housekeeper from the story.  When I think of this piece, one word comes to mind: cobblestones.  There are hundreds if not thousands of them here, and each one has a shadow on the right side, and a tiny highlight on the left.  At times I'll commit to this level of detail in a piece, because I find that it often pays off in terms of audience reaction.  Usually the resulting showmanship makes the time spent worth it...but for the artist, repetitiously dabbing away with the tiniest brushes...here lies the path to madness.  

2014: THE SERIES EXPANDS

When the opportunity arose to move the exhibition to a bigger venue, it became necessary to grow the series beyond the original six.  So I decided to paint another four.  Since I had covered the bare minimum with the first pool of works, this provided an interesting opportunity to explore the story in more depth.  

Painting 4: Scrooge's School Daze

Much of the narrative space of "A Christmas Carol" is taken up with the backstory of how Scrooge came to be who he was.  This is particularly true of the 1951 movie adaptation, which features many scenes not in the original story.  So it was that I decided to devote two of the new paintings to vignettes from Scrooge's journey with the Ghost of Christmas Past.  Here, Scrooge sees himself as a lonely young schoolboy in rural England.  This was a good opportunity to again brighten the palette of the exhibition, and I particularly enjoy painting shadows on bright winter snow.

Painting 5:  Marley's Warning

This is the one painting in the series lifted entirely from the 1951 screen adaptation.  There's scant mention of Marley's demise in the backstory of the Dickens novel, whereas the movie devotes quite a bit of time to it.  Despite its absence from the original story, I thought to include it because it presented a chance to see the current Scrooge standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a seven-year's-younger version of himself, as he and the Ghost look in on Marley's deathbed.  At the end of the day, this is my least favorite piece in the exhibit, in part because it turned out a little bit too grim (and this from a fan of grim, lol).  

Painting 7: God Bless Us Everyone

The previously underrepresented Crachit family, in particular Tiny Tim, joined the series with this piece...the most complicated to paint of the lot.  It is basically a painting within a painting...the warm interior centered around the hearth and the cold outer "frame" of Scrooge and the ghost looking in from the outside.  There's a repeat of the fire effect needed, and that glow illuminates everyone in the room, casting many strong shadows.  Once I had the interior scene painted, I then added in the exterior elements.  Careful planning was needed so that the leaded panes of the window didn't end up running through any critical information inside.  The exterior was rendered in a cool blue palette to contrast with the warmth inside, but the characters were still being influenced by the internal light of the fireplace, and so their highlights needed to be correspondingly warm.  The panes of glass are misted at the edges, the faint facial reflections of Scrooge and his counterpart are there, and there's a sprinkling of snow over top of it all.  As card sales indicate, this one proved to be the most popular of the four new ones, and one of the most popular of the series overall.

Painting 8: The Ghost of Christmas Future

By now a pattern had emerged with the series.  Each of the Christmas Ghosts had their 'introductory' painting, followed by scenes from the story that they participated in.  In the case of this ghost, I realized that my original painting of the scene at Scrooge's grave constituted a 'vignette' rather than an introductory painting, and so I thought I'd do a scene of the ghost's first appearance.  For inspiration I went back to the original story, which contains quite a vivid description of the spectre's first approach.


So that's how my 10-painting Christmas Carol exhibit came to be.  As I write this, I realize it's been a few years now since the last painting was finished...and perhaps the time is nigh for another expansion...maybe two more to bring the total to an even dozen.  I'll happily take suggestions for what those new ones may be!

Merry Christmas to one and all!