I am Yuyanda

God Help the Girl director Stuart Murdoch is the lead singer/songwriter of indie band Belle & Sebastian. In keeping with the bands bold two-tone album cover art I went for a minimal but more exciting full colour painting approach which should appease their fans with a single background colour to accompany each of the actor illustrations. The idea was if the illustration has a high saturation value then the background colour would be low saturation and vice versa. I later came across the Albers approach to colour studies which lead to finding the largest area of a hue from the actor illustration and producing a different colour within the same family for the background. I also attempted to combine these ideas with complimentary colours for each illustration and split complimentary colours to cohesively bring them all together. For more info about God Help The Girl visit  http://www.godhelpthegirl.com/ Eve played by Emily Browning. Cass played by Hannah Murray. J...

For the painting process I decided to stick to a digital workflow using Photoshop and Illustrator CS3 with my trusty Wacom graphire 4 tablet. My creative direction was simple incorporating an opaque flat colour approach with little or no airbrushing. I sampled colour swatches from 4 different palettes with a high saturation value and bright hues. I wanted to repeat the use of a single colour and draw the viewer’s eye towards her face, as seen on the lips and head scarf for Eve played by Emily Browning. The colour work was applied using a slightly modified hard edged brush to preserve a clean finish behind the line-art. For the character line-art check out 'God Help the Girl' WIP part 1  http://yuyanda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/god-help-girl-wip-work-in-progress.html For the leopard print dress on Cass played by Hannah Murray, I decided to isolate the dark areas of the pattern and trace it using Illustrator CS3 before adding any colour or brushwork in Photoshop CS3. A secti...