Jabba the Hutt Painting by Chris Cargill

I picked up this painting on eBay after losing an auction for a nearly identical painting by the same artist a little while before. From looking at the paintings being offered up for auction, it seems that Mr. Cargill specializes in doing paintings based on pop culture figures. He’s remarkably prolific, selling dozens of paintings at once, but most of them appear to be recreations of existing photos.

This particular painting is an impressive 18″x24″ in size and is on stretched canvas. It could either be based on the photo on the left from Return of the Jedi, or on the painting used for the cover of “The Art of the Deal” (which was itself clearly based on the photo). But the composition is such a perfect match for the cover of “The Art of the Deal” (note the hand in the lower right and the band of light or something in the upper right) that my hunch is it was a direct copy of that painting — perhaps even using it directly as a printed guide that was then painted over. The style is quite different, though. The cover art above is quite detailed and exceedingly well done (click here for a better shot of that artwork on its own). By contrast, this painting is more of a pop art piece that uses lines of different colors to create an overall effect, as you can see below.

I’ve got to say, this piece looks surprisingly good from a reasonable viewing distance. I won it for around $60, which seems pretty reasonable considering you’d probably pay more just to print out a photo on canvas at the same size. And since it’s on stretched canvas I don’t even have to worry about finding a frame for it (which is good, since it would likely cost more than the painting itself).