Sometimes it is hard to decide why you like a particular illustration. Justin Gerard is one of those artists that make it almost impossible for me!
St. George and the Dragon
by Justin Gerard
Justin's website: http://justingerard.com/
Justin's blog: http://quickhidehere.blogspot.com/
----Never at any point will I attempt to break any picture down in its entirety; just a quick analyzation of some of its strengths. ---
The first thing that caught my eye about this piece is the character design.
Like most of Justin's pieces this illustration had a bit of fun infused into it. For me, the humans was it. Perhaps it was the simplicity of their design (in comparison to Justin's more serious and deeply rendered pieces), or the comical/hopeless nature of their scale (in comparison to the towering cliff walls and even the dragon), or maybe it was their colors (that were a bit more lively than Justin usually uses on main characters), whatever the reason, I loved the humans.The next thing I wanted to discuss was his color usage. If you take a moment to analyze the picture, like I did, you will notice an ascending use of analogous colors starting from yellow to red.
This hiarchal use of color is much like traffic lights in the U.S., where the yellow is a warning and red is STOP! Our eyes are drawn to the yellow, they naturally travel to the orange (we are further warned by the drawn sword) and then rest on the RED dragon and we stop and think about what we saw.
The second thing you might notice is his use of complementary colors. In the foreground Justin introduces some green, so that he could use it MORE of it around the dragon, which is obviously red. Next, if you look in-between the crevices of the canyons distant wall, it is a toned purple, while the closer cliff faces are a tinted hazy yellow. This color usage also carries below in the foreground with the water.
Well thats if for my first official post. I hope that it wasn't too much blah, blahing. haha! Hope you enjoy!
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