Thursday, October 09, 2014

They hang pigs, don't they? pt 2


... In fact, it's a beautiful day for a hanging!

Continuing colouring my graphic novel on Hieronimus Bosch. I'm in chapter two now. Crowds are an important element and pretty difficult. I don't want them to end up as one brownish slush, but not too brightly coloured either. The bright blue sky I'm also still a bit doubtful about, despite my sardonic opening line. It does not quite fit the colour range I had chosen.

It would be tempting to pick colours from Bosch's paintings directly, but that is a bit weak IMO. And they are quite diverse anyway. The Garden of Earthly Delights is quite fresh-looking -in contrast to the semi-grisaille of The Wayfarer, for instance.

The exectutioner is a detail not to be missed. No black hood or studbelts - that is something out of modern day cartoons. In old images, you won't find any in that stereotypical garb. They were obliged to wear special clothing connected to their dishonourable profession, but this would be local. I could not find out what was the costum in s-Hertogenbosch around 1500, so I picked something yellow-ish. Yellow being the least favoured colour and connected to Judas and the Jews, of course.



6 comments:

alkbazz said...

Michel Pastoureau said something about red clothes of the executionner, it's after german name Iskariot which means "the man in red". Luther was about to ban red color from liturgy. Yellow is also bad for the reason you mentionned, but maybe this is stronger (like a robber) or an anti-jewish matter

alkbazz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
alkbazz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Marcel Ruijters said...

Alkbazz: You are right, Judas was often portrayed as a red-headed person for this reason.
The clothing for Jews is something I found more about, but it varies wildly.

Enrique Cardova said...

lol, pics like these make me want to 'duck' out of town..

Paleo said...

Yeah, crowds are hard to colour,i think you did pretty good here, maybe you could try the sky in the same grey tone of the clouds, or on a sickly yellow, like the first showing of the sunlight on the morning (of an execution)