Gosh, time has flown by so fast!  I am hurriedly wrapping up the end of an academic semester, and I still have boxes of art all over my home place from last weekend’s show. They need to be stowed so that I can decorate for the holidays. Slightly panicked, I’m trying to imagine how fast I can get my living room rearranged, my tree up, and my decorations placed around this Saturday.

I did take a moment yesterday to think about all of the wonderful people I had met at the Outlander Convention last weekend. I learned a lot at that show. Many of those lovely patrons had advice on how to present my work at a multi faceted venue like that was, and others had good advice on the need for a broader scaled pricing model. As a working painter I have tried to have some prints available but have also learned that offering prints of too many original works can devalue the original pieces. For this recent show I had made a few smaller prints that were created specifically as small and affordable works of art (Outlander icon pen and inks), some notecards using an image of one of my larger works (Morning Fog at Craig na Dun), and a small edition of a detail from a larger original (Safe Harbour).

Last night’s conclusion was that I needed to have a new gallery with a unique body of work for gift shopping and not solely investing.

ANNOUNCING:  the newest gallery in the STORE is the “Gift Shop” in your right hand menu bar. In this new gallery will be those unique, handcrafted, or small works and prints, usually under $100. It will be those items we’re looking for as a quick gift for someone else or a treat for yourself. I’m going to be adding some of the other fun things I like to create – craft or utility items such as note cards, jewelry, buttons, or whatever is not a large scale original painting. I have also made a link to the gichlee prints I carried previously and put them in there for your convenience.

As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If I don’t get back to you before, have a very happy holiday season.

Finally, let me talk about why I have not yet painted Jamie and Claire, or any of the other actors in the TV series. Believe me when I say I would love to do that! But here is the problem.

First of all I would need to get permission from many, many people. Not necessarily in the order of priority here is the rough idea: Ask Caitriona Balfe (Claire), Sam Heughan (Jamie), Gary Lewis (Colum MacKenzie), Graham McTavish (Dougal MacKenzie) and scores of other actors for written permission in a release document that defines my freedoms and restrictions. I probably need to get permission from each of their agents as well since I would be basically stepping into the promotional image area. I would also need to ask the director, Ronald D. Moore because he has now illustrated the story in film. I might need the go-ahead from Sony, but I’m not sure. Then I need a permission from Terry Dresbach who did the customized costuming because you would want to see the character you already know complete in recognizable attire, right? And of course I need to ask the author, Diana Gabaldon. I think there are probably more but you get my point. 

So, when you see a face I paint you can rest assured that I have taken my own photograph, or have permission to use them from the photographer who did, have gotten a signed release to paint them, or I have pulled the person from my imagination. Landscapes I shoot myself or paint on site so again, all my own so no permission needed.

If you know the folks that need to give me permission, tell them I would love to do the paintings. I think I could do them justice.

To continue the conversation about the need to reinterpret imagery to respect intellectual property, I have intersected the vision drawn from my reading of the books with the imagery from the TV series in a way that connects with my audience but does not infringe on either a photographer or film maker to do so. 

Applying the same principle to this painting, Craigh na Dun, I was challenged by an even greater dilemma. Although there are many stone sites dating back to the Druids in Scotland and Ireland, the exact stone circle we see in the film does not actually exist. There is a standing stone circle near to Culloden Battlefield called Clava Cairns, and the stone circle used in the TV series is said to be loosely based on it. You can, however, find dozens of photographs of Craigh na Dun as it is portrayed in the film – some quite dramatic and colorful and in various times of day or night. There again, I have seen some of the images and the TV series, but all of the images are photographs that in all probability were taken by film staff.

To comply with copyright here as well I needed to paint my interpretations of the writing in combination with the implied fictitious stone circle from the film. You won’t find this image with the mid-morning sun burning off the rolling fog in any photograph. 

Any artist needs to be very mindful of intellectual property and copyright laws. As I read these books it is completely appropriate for me to paint images that the writing prompts from my imagination. This is the stuff that book illustration is rooted in and it is the artist’s imagination that grows the characters or the settings and produces images based on what they read.

To add complexity to the mix, the research involved in writing historical fiction is often based to some degree on real places or people to lend credibility. The author, Diana Gabaldron, is well known for her accurate and extensive research practices and is working closely in the film production to ensure both accuracy to historical content and that they hold true to the books.

In this example, the painting I did is of the home of the Fraser clan, a castle called Lallybroch, also known as Broch Tuarach. The castle used in the TV series, called Midhope House, is actually somewhat in ruin and is situated just outside of Inverness.

Now here is where it the difficulty arises. Because the images in the TV series have attached themselves to the books for those who have seen the film versions, I must try and mirror those images to connect with my audience. There are photographs that have been taken of the real Midhope House by studio and tourist alike, but to comply with copyright law I cannot paint directly from one of those publicly posted photographs without infringing on that intellectual property of the photographer. I can either go to Scotland and take my own picture or I can look at many photographs of the site, research the location, and then create my own interpretation of it.