I have decided to begin a journey of exploring police interrogation video stills in oil on canvas.

Inspiration

Police interrogations are awkward, uncomfortable, important, scary and fascinating. The granulated muted images produced from out of date cameras provide a gritty feeling also represented in the body language being spoke by everyone in the room. The idea of “justice” is ingrained in America. Interrogation videos are heartbreaking to watch. Not knowing who is actually presenting truth clouds any decisive content. At any moment a confession could appear, or new facts emerge and direct focus somewhere else. This pivotal stage in a criminal case is showcased over and over in true crime stories all over America. The interactions between the individuals in the room help tell the story underneath the story.

Although I may have not committed the crime that caused me to be invited to an interrogation room, I am certainly guilty of some things in my life. My empathy comes from knowing that I am a sinner in need of Jesus, and I am just one bad decision from becoming the star of the next true crime series.

Process

I scrub the internet for some police interrogations and find one to work through. I find the still image within the file that helps tells the story without the context provided in a curated story. I place that image in a 30”w x 20”h file and edit the image for any composition issues. After printing the image onto a transparency, I sketch out the main shapes very quickly. I find a light, but general color theme in the piece and start to lay down those colors. After layering multiple colors to build the colors and keeping the layers thin I start to ad the darker colors to the painting. I then move back and forth from light to dark color builds until the painting matches the image. After the painting is a good representation of the photo, I look at the piece like I would a painting and start to build out certain areas slightly and push back other areas, while maintaining the overall composition.

Join us next time as we continue our artistic journey through the lens of Skillbilly Productions - more of these paintings in the works. Until then, keep exploring the world through the eyes of creativity!