In your magic within reaction thread, you said "That painting really is a bit of powerful storytelling." How so? I keep seeing people reference the powerfulness of the painting, and I don't think I understand its narrative significance. Explain?
Hurray, a chance to actually make use of my arts degree!
So interesting tidbit; if I’m not mistaken when the series first started airing, there was an exhibtion set up to celebrate with production and promotional art that this painting featured in. That could mean it was a piece of development art made to explore and establish the story….or it’s just a production asset that they where particularly proud of. Though for reasons I can see and will explain now.
So composition tid bit. If you put individual objects together in an image, the human eye will group and read it as one large object. This can be used in visual storytelling to portray a lot of individual things or people as one unit.
You can see this in the painting.
The family is clustered together, and standing in height orner so the eyes smoothly read downward….until you pass Isabel and hit Esteban. Esteban is pretty tall but is placed on the edge besides the shortest memer of the family. Your eye breaks away and has to look up again. He’s not a part of the unit.
Even if they don’t know how, a lot of people will be able to tell that this feels off. This isn’t a mistake on the part of the artist. There is a visual disruption in the composition of the painting that signals the in-story disruption between the family, the fallout of which will lead to the main set up of the show.To emphasise this, here’s a quick edit I threw together.
I’ve put Esteban amongst his abuelos, a fitting place for his height (and also his official place in the family).
As you can see, in this edit he is a part of the unit. The disruption is lacking.
Another more subtle element is the composition of values (light or darkness of a color).
•The Castillo-Flores family, especially the girls have the lightest value. They pop out first.•Then there are Francisco and Luisa, who have lower (darker) values. However the strong shadows on them are blocky. This creates contrast with the lighter areas and again, pop those bright areas out out. •Esteban has the highest area of low values. Apart from the neckchief, he lacks the bright accessories and trimings that have lighter value and draw the eye. If you look at the lower right half of the painting he literally blends into the background. Even his face lacks the strong contrast of shadow and light that would push his features out.
Again this visually signals that this guy is less important than the rest.
Narrative wise know that’s not true, but if Esteban wanted to explain why he felt so left out, he could probably have pointed at this painting because that is the story it tells.Heck, look at where he is standing in the painting. The entire family is standing shoulder to shoulder, except for Esteban whose standing ever so slightly behind them.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
**apologies to anyone who knows anything about art and is cringing at my clumsy use of art termenology. Me pictures, not words.
