Reply To: What Are You Painting Now?

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Entry Number Three: Napoleon Bonaparte, First Emperor of France

This model popped up in my news feed on Facebook about a month ago and I decided I needed to have it.  It’s based on one of a series of paintings, all by the same artist and all depicting the same scene, called “Napoleon Crossing the Alps”.  It specifically shows Napoleon at the Great St. Bernard Pass and, as testament to his ego, carved into the stone at the base of the painting are the names of other great generals who achieved the same feat – Hannibal and Charlemagne.  To give Napoleon his dues, as despotic and tyrannical as he was, I think his achievements have at least earned him the right to compare himself favourably to both of those characters.  The specific variant of the painting I chose was the Belvedere version and I tried my best to capture the same colours and style – which isn’t easy because I am not actually that good a painted.  Still, it was an interesting challenge.  I did likewise with the final photo

Proximity to Theme

I would say this hits the theme perfectly.  Is it a champion?  Yes, Napoleon was beloved by his soldiers because he brought them victory.  Is it Glorious?  I think so yes.  I mean, Napoleon had a colossal ego and he had this painting of himself commissioned so he obviously thought it was glorious and if anyone knows what glorious means it’s Napoleon.

Originality

Well, again it’s a hard one to judge.  But hopefully, the fact that I have attempted to recreate an oil painting will count as being original because of the nature of the endeavour rather than being accused of just copying an existing image.  Who knows?  From my point of view, this was not something I had done before I had a lot of fun making the final image

Painting Skill

I am quite proud of this one.  I think I have captured the colours well and again, it’s neat, the transitions are neat and the colours are clean.  I didn’t take the highlights very high mostly because I don’t actually like that ‘Eavy Metal style where everything is highlighted almost to white.  I also think I managed to capture a sort of oil painting style in which, when placed in front of that background does not look out of place

Homeworld

The Alps aren’t Napoleon’s homeworld, however it is most certainly the “homeworld” within the context of him crossing the alps.  I think the base captures that.  It was constructed from scratch using cork and gravel and at the end added a few dry grass tufts and some patches of ice and snow

Photo Quality

I am actually quite proud of this one.  I could have gone with the standard “parchment” background but I went for something more ambitious.  I found a photo of an stormy, alpine landscape online which I downloaded and then ran through an oil painting filter.  I then printed it off and used that as the background of the photo.  I placed the model on a plain black surface rather than directly onto the photo background.  This means that the alps look like they’re rising straight up behind him rather than curving around.  To try and disguise the boundary between the black surface and the background, I applied a vignette filter to darken the outer edges of the picture.  This has made the bottom portion of the image very dark whilst leaving the miniature in the middle looking quite bright.  Obviously if you look for it you can easily see the black plastic surface, however your eye is naturally drawn to the lighter, brighter areas of the photo, straight to the subject.  Finally, I called the photo “My enemies are many, my equals are none” which is lifted from the intro video to Napoleon Total War.