While seeking to include all of the characters and the general setting of the story, I didn’t want it devolving into another generic movie poster. That was the challenge with my recent painting of the 1985 classic “The Goonies.”

This film is one of my all time favorites. I think kids loved this movie because the stars were young teenagers on an exciting adventure in search of pirate treasure and I think we all dreamed of finding buried treasure as kids at some point. I decided to mix actual scenes of the film with fabricated scenes to illustrate the lightheartedness of the story. Sloth and Chunk take the focus in this work because I felt they provided the most heart of the film. From the antagonist side, Mama Fratelli was great for her scowls, and smoker’s voice. She brought a wonderful comedic presence in a menacing demeanor.

Behind these three characters is a scene from the film with some injected artistic license. In the film, the Fratelli’s are chasing the Goonies and encounter a log across a subterranean creek. The kids had to race across the dangerous and wet bridge in order to escape the criminal family. The change I made to that scene involved placing a Fratelli brother on each side of the log. I only made this decision in order to give the Goonies’ kids something to respond to on each side. My hope was to make the scene a little more dynamic.

The length of time for this project from conception to completion was about 3 1/2 years. There was a long period of inactivity due to my family obligations. However, once I made the commitment to finish the painting, I was pleased with the overall results. You’ll see from the upcoming video, that the most difficult parts of the painting were rendering Mama Fratelli and Chunk’s likeness. I took photos of them and had to rotate their faces in my mind to get the look and expression I was looking for. I believe I repainted both faces at least a dozen times before I settled on the final result. Figure likenesses are so challenging – I guess that’s why I like doing them. I debated for months on whether or not to repaint entire sections of this work. Eventually, I decided to call it a painting. I try not to be a perfectionist when painting and I surely don’t want a painting driving me crazy as I try to reach an unobtainable vision of perfection. When you look upon this work, I hope you find yourself smiling and remembering the first time you saw this classic adventure comedy.

I’ve done some movie paintings in the past and this will not be the last. In fact, you can expect some fun movie projects from me in 2019. There will be a twist however and I’ll explain that later. For now, look at my Instagram account for clues(@the_art_of_ryan_williams).

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