The Magic Bus

In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the main character Chris McCandless finds an old transit bus in Alaska that he lives in until he dies. I painted a view of the “magic bus” surrounded by evergreen trees with an old oil barrel in the front. I tried to make the painting as true to the picture as possible, but I also added a few stylistic things into the painting to put my own twist on it. For example, I made the snow with one of the same shades as the sky instead of white so that it would stand out from the top of the bus, which was also white. It also helped to make it look like the sky reflected on the snow. Also, I added some rust to the top of the bus to show how run down it was. While doing this, it made me think of how Chris didn’t care about how run down the bus was, it was a place for him to sleep, read, and write and it didn’t matter the condition of the bus, as long as it was a roof over his head.