What I found then was a range of videos from various Eurovision aficionados telling everyone who they thought were the best acts taking place this year. Their videos were filled with clips from acts around Europe . . . and Australia?? How did that happen? I suppose it shows there must be people with worse geography than mine!
Those video clips were my answer. Images of people on stage and MOVING! Whoo hooo!! I went through countless videos and kept doing freeze-frame after freeze-frame to try and capture the best movement which I could then sketch.
That still gave me lots of different acts to choose from and the last thing that I wanted to do was to just choose one country’s act to portray. It would have been different if I had been commissioned to do a painting featuring the winner after the event but not for a painting prior to the grand occasion.
So I focused on the main singers and thought I would combine a selection of them on stage together but somehow not looking like they were all one act. As I kept looking for good poses to create the action and energy that is the hallmark of Eurovision I realised I was mainly selecting singers with heavily accentuated sleeves to their colourful costumes.
I had to hope that they would be wearing the same costumes at the Liverpool event as they were on their promo film clips but hopefully Eurovision fans will recognise them from having seen the same videos.
In the final selection there were two singers wearing black but one took a dramatic pose on the stage that I couldn’t resist because of the strong triangular shape it created which contrasted well with the mainly upright shapes of the other singers. I then spotted one of a singer sitting cross-legged on the floor and another crouching down so they would alternate well with the standing figures.
With the acts chosen I began the final placing of the singers plus the drum kit which I wanted to add so that I could write “Eurovision 2023 Liverpool” onto the front just to emphasise the topic.
The drum kit needed to be centre stage so tucking it under the bottom of the heart was obvious. Next I wanted to add in the host country’s entry. One of Mae’s trademarks is her incredibly long finger nails so when I froze a video with her placing her hands with their long red nails on the back of her creamy-white skirt, I knew that was the image I needed. By placing her just off centre I could link her red top to the red of the Union flag while the bend of her left elbow pointed to the lettering on the drums.
One of my freeze-frame sketches had the Lithuanian singer sideways facing in from the left and one of the Belgian singer was sideways on but facing to the right – that made the edge figure placement easy and both had their arms out showing off the huge sleeves on their costumes. There were 3 crouching/sitting figures and another standing one so it was obvious to alternate standing and crouching figures.
Both the Danish and Belgian singers had magenta and black so placing them each side of the canvas balanced out the colours. The two figures in black needed brighter backgrounds, so the French singer was placed predominantly in front of the yellow beams going up to the Ukrainian flag plus some of the white edge on the heart shape, while the crouching Albanian singer had part of the yellow beams and some lighter stage flooring colour but is also helped by the flesh tones showing through on the arms and legs of her costume. That left the remaining crouching figure – from Finland – whose vivid green sleeves stood out from the dark blue light beams and the black trousers.
With everyone placed, it still left the actual painting of the figures and trying to capture the look of them caught mid-note – well at least the four who you can see from their faces are meant to be singing!
The final touches were the beams of light coming up from the footlights at the front of the stage. All the beams were to come from two fixed points but I wanted them to reach across the majority of the stage. It’s no problem to fan beams of lights out but the one thing that couldn’t happen was for the beams to cut through the actual face of any of the performers.
Look closely at the angles of those beams and you’ll see that there are slightly wider gaps either side of singers’ faces which help to frame and separate the individual singers while the beams going across the full width of the canvas keys the whole image together.
It’s colourful, vibrant, energetic and symbolic of Eurovision 2023 which is being hosted by UK in Liverpool . . . job done!
The finished canvas “Eurovision 2023 Comes to Liverpool” is on exhibition in the Sefton Open which is staged at The Atkinson in Southport from April 1 to May 13 2023.