Ed Ruscha (+Pastiche)

Edward Ruscha is an American artist, arguably best known for his "Standard Station" piece. The image is a screen print, based on a photo he took while driving. He reused the screens to experiment further, and created additional versions. Even though I didn't particularly like Ruscha's work at first glance, I found that the minimalism grew on me, and I chose to create my own version.  

Originally, I was going to work traditionally, using the same paint as I did for the James Gurney pastiches. However, I decided against it, as I realised that it wouldn't give me the flat, even colours I needed. Instead, I chose to work digitally, and this ultimately worked out in my favour as I could "trace" the shapes I needed from the photo, hide the layer, and repeat, until I had my pastiche. 

I started off by taking a photo of a petrol station through the window of the car I was in. Unfortunately, this means that the "angle" isn't as dramatic, and I didn't make any efforts to exaggerate it, which ended up taking away some of the visual interest. I really struggled with the angle - Ruscha's station doesn't show any sort of floor, and I wasn't sure how to approach this in mine. I chose similar colours to the scene to create my image - a light blue background to imitate the sky, greys for the station itself, and then black and orange as accents. While these colours are similar to Ruscha's palette, mine ended up being more desaturated, with less contrast, which again, makes it less successful. I left out the gradient sky since I didn't like it in the original, but I think this makes my work look less recognisable inspired by Ruscha's. 

Even though the final outcome isn't as dramatic, I am still somewhat pleased with how the piece turned out. I was stressed about how I'd capture a similar sort of crispness in my image, but all it took was a different approach. It was fairly easy to create in the end. If I were to try again, I'd definitely try to tackle the weaknesses I mentioned - such as actually giving it that distinctive gradient!