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Description
Adobe Illustrator.

I wanted a 30's pulp book cover feel, but sticking with the retro cartoon look. The somewhat garish red sky and bright orange in the windows against the surrounding muted colors has that pulp look to me. The flat colors and flat pattern on the woman's suit give things the right cartoon feel.

I wanted the picture to say the woman/wife sees her husband with another woman and pulls the gun out to kill the husband, girlfriend, or both. I realize without text describing what's happening there can be several viewer interpretations to how the picture reads: the embracing couple and the woman are unrelated; the armed woman is the husband's girlfriend and wants to kill the wife to have the husband for herself; she's pulling the gun to shoot herself; she's trying to protect the couple.

I tried to use color and composition to subliminally get the viewer to read the picture the way I wanted.The red sky is to psychologically express anger or rage. The woman's head and upper torso are surrounded by red. The woman's warmer colors against the more greenish neutral-colored buildings bring her forward and help to keep the sort of red/anger motif going. The rim lighting on her helps to push her forward also.

The windows are the other warm spots. The pulled blind window acts as a compositional aid, and an arrow to push the viewer around the picture. The pulled blind could say the adulterous couple didn't care enough to at least pull the blind so no one could see their affair.

The embracing couple window is colored bright orange and purple, typically "passionate" colors to indicate the passion of the couple. The upper window sits straight across from the woman's face to say what's going on is right in front of her face. The look on the woman's face shows an unwilling resolve, doing what she has to.

The bricks, suit, gun, and building detail "outside" the couple's building indicate more complexity, more thinking, more problems, than "inside" the couple's building, with little detail, just simple-minded desire. The woman looks away from the couple, perhaps appalled, having seen enough, and looks down at the gun. The gun is "inside" the building, the orange light from the window gleaming on the hammer, perhaps to say the gun is getting ready to penetrate into the couple's world.

Description
Adobe Illustrator.

I wanted a 30's pulp book cover feel, but sticking with the retro cartoon look. The somewhat garish red sky and bright orange in the windows against the surrounding muted colors has that pulp look to me. The flat colors and flat pattern on the woman's suit give things the right cartoon feel.

I wanted the picture to say the woman/wife sees her husband with another woman and pulls the gun out to kill the husband, girlfriend, or both. I realize without text describing what's happening there can be several viewer interpretations to how the picture reads: the embracing couple and the woman are unrelated; the armed woman is the husband's girlfriend and wants to kill the wife to have the husband for herself; she's pulling the gun to shoot herself; she's trying to protect the couple.

I tried to use color and composition to subliminally get the viewer to read the picture the way I wanted.The red sky is to psychologically express anger or rage. The woman's head and upper torso are surrounded by red. The woman's warmer colors against the more greenish neutral-colored buildings bring her forward and help to keep the sort of red/anger motif going. The rim lighting on her helps to push her forward also.

The windows are the other warm spots. The pulled blind window acts as a compositional aid, and an arrow to push the viewer around the picture. The pulled blind could say the adulterous couple didn't care enough to at least pull the blind so no one could see their affair.

The embracing couple window is colored bright orange and purple, typically "passionate" colors to indicate the passion of the couple. The upper window sits straight across from the woman's face to say what's going on is right in front of her face. The look on the woman's face shows an unwilling resolve, doing what she has to.

The bricks, suit, gun, and building detail "outside" the couple's building indicate more complexity, more thinking, more problems, than "inside" the couple's building, with little detail, just simple-minded desire. The woman looks away from the couple, perhaps appalled, having seen enough, and looks down at the gun. The gun is "inside" the building, the orange light from the window gleaming on the hammer, perhaps to say the gun is getting ready to penetrate into the couple's world.