Sunday, December 29, 2013

Can I sketch you? - practical art in Eddie's projects

Art features prominently in the life of Eddie Redmayne. He loves the visual arts and drawing, that's why he studied art history in Cambridge. Here are some captures from his films in which he draws sketches.

The Pillars of the Earth


Birdsong







A Hot Young Actor from Britain Paints the Town ‘Red’ 
excerpt from Isa Goldberg's interview - April 23, 2010 ( x )
Q: I’ve read that you’re colorblind.
A: This is true. I’m what is called red-green colorblind. I confuse different tones of reds with browns and greens and grays. So it’s weird. I studied history of art at (Cambridge) University which everybody thinks is very odd, given that I’m colorblind. People assume that you see in black and white, but it’s not that at all. It’s an occasional muddling of colors.
Q: What drew you to studying art history?
A: I don’t know, man. I was very lucky when I was younger. London has, like New York, the most extraordinary art collections. My mom was always interested in art and she would take me to the Tate and the Courtauld Institute and some of these great places. But I started by enjoying practical art. So I suppose it was through the practical art side of it that I got into the history of it.
Q: You started out by being an artist yourself?
A: To a certain extent. I’ve never been very good, but I’ve enjoyed it. While I’ve been doing “Red,” I’ve been living in the East Village and I’ve bought myself a lot of canvas and paint. My intent is – you know that canvas that Ken has, his painting – by the end of the run, I want to fill my canvas with what I think Ken’s painting would be. At the moment I’m just experimenting – quite appallingly.

Excerpt from The Telegraph interview about "Red"( x ):
...The entire production is set in Rothko’s Bowery studio in New York, and Redmayne will have to mix paints on stage. 'We will see how qualified I am to do that,’ he says. 'Hopefully, it won’t be too embarrassing. It will be fun for the audience to watch us crush pigments, cook paints, and prime canvases. That’ll be luscious. I imagine the Donmar is going to stink of white spirit for the next three months.’
'I don’t want to be irritating about it, but this is the dream job for me,’ says Redmayne, 27, who graduated in 2003 in history of art from Trinity College, Cambridge. Acting and art have been his two passions since childhood.
Eddie Redmayne about living in New York when he did the play "Red" on Broadway ( x ):
I was living in the East Village in a great little flat by Astor Place, and I’d always had this romantic dream about living in New York at some point. When I was living in New York, I had this slightly wannabe bohemian existence and took up painting, at which I’m appalling. I also bought several guitars.

Powder Blue
Excerpt from Hope's report about meeting Eddie Redmayne after the Richard II show on 01.01.2012

(full report here)
- May I ask you a couple of questions? - I asked while he was signing for me.
- Sure – he stops and looks directly at me, waiting, as if there is no one else around. I didn't expect him to do this I thought he'd be still signing for other people while answering.
- In Powder Blue your character had all those drawings on the wall.
- Yes – Still looking into my eyes, smiling
- Did you do them?
- Yes – Smiling with pleasure at me
- Was it your idea to do them or that was in the script?
- A little bit of both
- Thank you! May I have a picture with you?
- Of course

For a bigger size click on the pictures!
Update: The Danish Girl
I was lucky to be a part of a conference call for fan bloggers during The Danish Girl promo and I asked him if he did some painting for the movie. He answered:
"I did some drawings and a wee bit of painting to try to get what Einar’s, or Lili when she was living as Einar, what her technique was. Alicia and I talked a lot about the difference between the way those two artists painted, and certainly in the set design in that scene when we are in the artist studio Gerda’s character has a flamboyant kind of mess of a corner as were as Lili’s corner is much more ordered. And the way she paints when she’s living as Einar is very … I wanted it to be very controlled because Lana Wachowski has described how Einar’s paintings would always go back to painting subject-matter, researching into the parts really. I did a wee bit of drawing and painting to try and work out how she might have painted when she was Einar. And it was interesting for Alicia as well because she just shot Tulip Fever and she had played an artist in that as well. It’s always fun playing artists.

Some images are cropped, I used captures from Eddie Redmayne Spain Galeria and made captures myself as well.
Red promo photo by Hugo Glendinning (source: eddieredmayne.ru) (x)

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