I've decided, then, to work from photography to painting. See the post below, Commuting Syndrome, for some more details.
I've picked a photo which I think is fairly successful. The characters of the men in the foreground are strong. I took several pictures of the same two men and watched them closely for the duration of the journey.
I have worked several of the pictures together to make a composite image.
In all the pictures, the fat man in the foreground (I need to give him a name — I'll call him Colin) has his phone in his hand, but in the painting, he will not be looking at it. This will help to get over the point about preoccupation and distraction on a train journey. I also want to show how isolated people are determined to be, in general, on a train, in spite of their closeness to one another.
I have been looking at the catalogue of the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery. There's a term called 'synthetic naturalism'. It sounds complicated, but isn't, really. For example, Leonardo drew parts of various horses, taking what was ideal from each horse. He wanted to combine these different parts to make an image of a perfect horse. In a similar way, I want to splice together different photos of commuters to make a painting that captures as much of the experience of commuting as possible.
