Saturday, April 5, 2014

E is for Erwin Madrid

This one was hard because I didn't know any artists that had a first or last name that started with E... so I did some research and discovered Erwin Madrid (here is a link to his blog, and here is one to his website)

Once again he is an artist with a LOT of variety in his portfolio- if you go to his website you'll get to see that he's worked on various movies, comic books, children's books and he has a lot of his personal work on there.  It is all really well done and totally dynamic.

So for today's sketch- after searching through his website for a bit I found myself returning to this piece over and over again.


Not only was the art beautiful- but I really liked the narration of the piece- it's the kind of image that makes you want to read the book that it is in.  A few quick technical things that I really really like about this piece.  First off is the perspective.  He uses a dynamic 3 point perspective to move your eye from the primary focal point (the princess's face) down into the village and then back up again into the tower.  He is also another illustrator that uses simple shapes and value (light vs dark) to direct the eye and create the illusion of depth.  Granted all artists use shapes and value to communicate in their work- but compare Madrid to Donato (who I shared yesterday) and you can totally see what I mean by using simple shapes.  The princess here looks like a girl- and you can believe that she has form and structure despite the fact that the shapes used to make her are pretty flat.

My sketch was defiantly inspired by this picture- though while I was trying to incorporate his style, I let more of 'me' shine through as well.  I don't have a particular style necessarily- but I am learning that I have certain ways of putting down my lines and certain shapes my eyes are attracted to.  It has been really cool to discover that- and in part it is because of this project. 

I also was playing around a little more with the idea of visually developing the character- hence the facial expressions.  Once again- I think I'll come back to this sketch at a later date.

Until then-

~Alicia

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