I've wanted a cartoon self-portrait to put in my Blogger profile for a while now. After I read Muddy Colors' recent post on Mingjue Helen Chen, I fell in love with her style and decided to try illustrating myself in that way. Ultimately it's not a style I'll be keeping (mostly because it's not mine to begin with!), but it was a great exercise in texture and I definitely think I will be adding more texture to future paintings.
Read the Muddy Colors post, Mingjue & Me, for insight as well as a real-time video of her process (I LOVE real-time videos!), and check out her blog for some truly great art. She also put up a post with links to the brushes she uses. I know it's not the brush that makes the artist, but as someone still building and experimenting with their Photoshop brush library, these helped me a lot - they handle very nicely.
Here's my favorite recent piece of hers - I love the idea of reinterpreting comic book costumes into casual outfits! Anything that appeals to my fangirl side and my "omg, clothes" side is a win in my book.
© Gina Florio 2014
Not really into posting but I read she was trained by Paul Felix. Felix is THE guy and I can see a lot his process in her work. Hans Bacher (if you haven't already subscribed to his blog) speaks VERY highly of him (Hans is amazing (he's a GREAT designer) and at Disney he is HIGHLY regarded), and I took a class with Will (Weston) and he also spoke much about Felix and his process (and the 'Disney' process of laying down tone, etc). I don't even care for animation and I can appreciate how lovely Felix's work is, even compared to ALL that Photoshop/dig painting work out there. I feel like I'm giving out too much info, so I"m going to disappear into the nothingness of blog oblivion right now...
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