This idea has been on the back burner for a while and I decided to go ahead with painting it as it could be a nice one to show at IX next week (!) as it is bit different to the others although within the Orientalist themes that I have been painting recently. It is of course based on the Bogart/Bergman film "Casablanca", a favourite film for a lot of people including myself. The idea occurred when I was in the middle of painting a few Orientalist pictures of busy souks and medinas when it dawned on me that I could kind of bring them up to date (well 1942!) with an imagination of Rick's Café Américain as though it really was in the casbah of Casablanca.
I did see what Midjourney could come up with and although it did somehow get me started you will see that I used very little of it, I just liked the look of it. I found a still from the film that showed the exterior of the Café and used that (apart from the second set of doors) and then set it in an imagined relatively scruffy street with night lighting.
I will be taking this over to IX in my luggage as it was finished after I had sent the main boxes and it looks like they have had Customs clearance and will be delivered to GoggleWorks today which is happily very different to my previous dealings with US Customs!
Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.
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| Midjourney |
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| Film Still |
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