Portrait
My husband and I have been big fans of Ink Master, a reality competition tv show. Tattoo artist compete against each other weekly with different challenges. There is always an American Traditional style challenge. I love the bold line work and and big eyes of the stylistic women. I had to do a tribute, which would mix my style with the bold decisions making of Traditional.
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I start all my portraits off very vague and slowly try to find a drawing within my shapes. Sometimes I find inspiration from music or possibly what movie or audiobook I'm listening to. This past week I caught up on the TV series Outlander (also a great book series) playing on Starz, which features female heroine Claire Beauchamp Fraser. So unintentionally my drawing ended up reflecting a lot of Caitriona Balfe's features. :)
Latest portrait illustration of Jack Frost. Most of my portraits are quite like Ella. This time I wanted to play with organized chaos with a low key lighting. I'm planning a very colorful Golden Compass illustration that's going to involves the Northern Lights, so this helped me workout some decisions. These portraits are about fun and working out problems before a big color piece.
I wanted Jack Frost to be an androgynous character. I needed to balance the smoothness of his face with the crisp lines of his hair and surroundings. Also wanted the flow of the wind to show with my stroke choices in the background. There are things that I do and don't like with this one, but over all I'm happy with it.
Below is a close up. I even added ice on his eyelashes after watching Narnia for inspiration :P
I like to do black and white portraits to warm up. There is no planning. Just some reference and a white piece of paper. It is relaxing for me and a good way to ease into a more complicated piece later. I named this one "Ella" after a book character from the current audiobook I'm listening too. I often name my portraits after songs or book characters.
I had a lot of fun with this one. I wanted to add a little narrative since I often don't with my portraits, so I needed to consider what environment she was in. The character has a lot of curves to her face and hair, so I knew I needed some strong straight lines to help compliment all those curved shapes. A forest. I added debris to her hair to let the audience ask questions about this character's story. Why is she in a forest? Who is she? Who or what is she staring at? so on and so on....
The inspirational reference I used for this portrait. I looooved her hair. I also thought it would be a good challenge working with the texture of her hair vs. the feather thing vs. the smoothness of her skin. I also loved how her face *pops!*
