The Lunar Chronicles, Cress (2018)

Here is my third painting based on Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series and you can see my other two paintings based on the first book ‘Cinder’ and the second book ‘Scarlet’ on my profile.

The series retells famous fairy tales in a futuristic sci-fi setting and the third book “Cress’ is based on Rapunzel. The main character Cress is imprisoned in a satellite and is forced to be a tech hacker by the main villian of the series.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, my aim with this series of paintings is to combine my interest in medieval and renaissance imagery, fairy tales and storybooks with more sci-fi and modern imagery. I’ve been choosing specific parts of Meyer’s retellings that I think also represent the original fairy tale well, in this case, Rapunzel in her tower.

With this in mind, I based the look of the satellite on medieval architecture, most notably with the archways and domed ceding and the overall symmetry of it. I also feel this helped portray the traditional storybook look of the painting. After posting this image on instagram, someone pointed out the similarity between Cress and Botticelli’s iconic ‘Birth of Venus’ painting, presumably because of the hair, and while this wasn’t intentional on my part, I can definitely see it too.

Due to Cress being a hacker and spy, see is constantly surrounded by technology and screens and I decided to fill these screens with nods and details from the series. In the screens you can see profile’s on the characters Cinder, Kai and Carswell Throne (Cress’s love interest), the moon, the desert, the Rampion space ship and even a nod to my own painting style.

Originally I was going to depict the screens as ultra modern holograms, but they eventually became more old fashioned with frames and wires and pipes surrounding and connecting them. This actually really helped me fill out the space around the central part of the painting and I like the overall busy look of it.