For this image, i'm going to base it on one of New Yorks most notorious Crime Lords of the 1920s. His names Dutch Schultz, this criminal is wanted for bootlegging, racketeering and murder. There's so much reference to be used on this brutal guy. One of these events/acts that him and his gang performed is quite disturbing but should be illustrated to show how cruel he was.
A cherry pick of some events that occurred during the life of this criminal king.
- By the mid-1920s, Schultz realized that bootlegging was the way to make serious money. He got involved in the beer trade working as a strong-arm goon for some of the bigger operators. He once drove a beer truck for the legendary Arnold Rothstein, and at one time he and Charles “Lucky” Luciano were members of the Jack “Legs” Diamond gang.
- The operation, which began modestly in the Bronx, was now expanding over to Manhattan’s upper West Side into the neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Yorkville, and Harlem. Schultz and Noe moved their headquarters out of the Bronx and onto East 149th Street in Manhattan. However, the gang’s move to Manhattan brought them into direct competition with Jack “Legs” Diamond.
- In May 1929, Schultz participated in the Atlantic City Conference. The meeting was attended by dozens of mobsters of various ethnic and religious backgrounds from around the country. The main topic of the conference was cooperation between the gangs and the cities they represented, and to discuss plans for the day Prohibition was repealed.
- The two partners realized they could increase their profits by supplying beer to their rivals. If speakeasy owners turned down overtures to purchase beer from the Schultz/Noe combine, they were soon warned to buy it, or else. Joe and John Rock were brothers who decided to play hardball with Schultz. John quickly stepped aside, but his stubborn Irish brother refused to give in. One night Joe Rock was kidnapped by members of the Schultz / Noe gang, and brutalized. Rock was beaten and hung by his thumbs on a meat hook. The gang allegedly wrapped a gauze bandage over his eyes that had been smeared with the discharge from a gonorrhea infection. His family reportedly paid $35,000 for his release. Shortly after Joe Rock went blind.
A very quick sketch to get the feel of the situation, composition is crucial in this image. Placing the shadows in the correct places is important and i want to get it perfect.
Although I don't want this to be to graphic, when painting this, I plan to illustrate the cruel act by using shadows to visualize the scene using the Noir style.
Image 2.
The background for this painting is just a very quick idea to show which direction I'm going to take, this will most likely change.
image 3
Now that I've got my main point of interest complete, I can now move onto planning out how I want the room to look. The background to this image contains several different images that have been arranged together to look like a grubby city apartment.
These are the 2 photos that I used to map out the far wall of my image.
image 4
For this part of the image, I started to draw in the silhouetted figures that carried out the torture. Their positions are temporary, I placed them there to give me an idea on how the image would look and if I had enough room.
I used this wooden fence to frame the picture and to also show that Dutch and his mob are in separate rooms.
This shows that Dutch is boss and has his mob to do most of the dirty work while he sits back and smokes.
image 5
Im quite happy with the figure keeping look out by the window, think I'll leave him where he is.
The image is progressing really well and better than I expected, in this image I decided to use desaturate on Dutch so he'd be black and white along with the rest of the image. I also added flooring in the image because its way better than the boring grey tone that I originally had. The wooden flooring gives the image a sense of scale and perspective due to its alignment.
Image of the wooden flooring that I used. This floor changed the look of my image completely. I messed around with the curves tool to darken it and make it look gritty to match the rest of the picture.
Finished image! wooh.
After 6 hours of working on this image, Ive finally got an awesome outcome.. wooh! well I'm happy with it anyway. I defined several areas of the images and applied shadows to give the image more atmosphere and a sense of realism.
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