This afternoon, after several distractions and false starts, I managed to get round to making some exploratory sketches (in fact, little more than thumbnails) for the possible new set of images I mentioned yesterday. The ideas flowed fairly well, and as things stand at the moment there will be seven in the series. As the task progressed, however, I became aware of an interesting, and so far unresolved, problem.
I had begun by telling myself a story, and noting down the essentials of the narrative in terms of the actions of the two focal characters, together with suggestions of the nature of their implied setting and (more significantly) their assumed state of mind.
Then, when I came to preparing a group of drawings it began to emerge that there is a tension between the assumed “narrative necessity” and what I suppose is best called “pictorial necessity”. My initial exploration of the idea, for example, had made no assumptions about the spatial context in which the two figures are to be located. When I came to designing a visual representation of these situations, however, it became clear that I had to convey at least some suggestions of that context, even if only through an implied source of light. Are the figures intended to be in movement, and if so in which direction? And so on.
One idea I have played with is the possible significance of a change of format. The majority of the images I have sketched use a landscape format, whereas the central one in the series stands as a kind of pivot, changing to a portrait format. I think that this should serve to convey well the change of mood in the narrative. There is a good deal to think about here.
Reflecting on this question over dinner I realised that these issues are bread and butter in the cinema, where the choice of a succession of shots, the way these are framed, and over what distance, must be a matter of routine for any director. It is, however, the first time I have had to think about it in relation to painting, where despite the fact that frequently I work with serial images this is the first occasion on which there has been any assumed narrative behind them.