M.I.A. Redux

I've been working on a new M.I.A. illustration for a couple days (or weeks, if you include my thoughts, hopes, and dreams on the subject). I'm completely scrapping the test-painting that I started of her back in October, as I come to the realization that the time for playing around and experimenting is over and the time to make some serious illustrations needs to begin.

Also, I've been obsessed with Matthew Woodson's art for about a week now, and looking at his blogs and techniques have instilled in me a new sense of vibrancy towards inked work (which is probably the one thing that I can honestly say that I do very well). I'm going to try to push the colors to be a little more organic, using natural techniques where I used to use digital ones. Another artist who I love is Yoann Lemoine--he paints underneath his inked works. I've done some things similar to this, but never spent any real time playing with the format.

What I really love about both Woodson and Lemoine's art is the way that they stylize their drawings. Especially the way Lemoine applies a boxy look to everything. I still need to find where I stand in the world of stylization. In other words, what does a person look like through "Osgood-vision", or a dog, or a lamp post... anything? I've been trying out the distortion thing for about a year now, and I'm having trouble combining that with inked work, especially inked portraiture. In this image in particular, I stretched Maya's face out rather dramatically in the horizontal, but then wasn't completely sure how to go about her body... She is a beautiful, full-figured girl, so I didn't want to do the long arms and legs that I've been doing so much recently, but also didn't want to get too realistic with her proportions. I think I found a pretty good mix between the two... We'll see how I feel about it in a couple months after I've done some more work.

I definitely know that my work lends itself best to broad, incomplete, yet confident strokes, and I need to find a way to use that more. Kagan McLeod is another illustrator that I take a look at fairly often... he does some wonderfully vague ink work, if you look through his whole portfolio.