Toni Infante study part 2

Composition

The composition in this piece is largely diagonal which gives it the feeling of being so dynamic in both the characters gesture and the surrounding atmosphere. For example when we look at it scrolled out the first diagonal we notice is the sniper rifle resting on his neck which acts not only as a strong diagonal line but also it intersects with where our focal point is which is the face. 

Notice also that he cuts some of the sniper rifle off on both ends as well as his legs below the knee which gives the whole image a feeling of it being bigger than life in a way. We also see this counter diagonal lines going in the opposite direction in the two light shimmers on the right. You could almost say these light shimmers and the sniper rifle form an X over our focal point keeping our eyes there. Its also important to not that he stretches the sides of the light shimmers all the way up or across the piece. It makes an interesting hash tag like shape. 

This strong straight diagonal is contrasted against the swooping organic diagonals that form in the clouds in the background. More diagonals are found  in the approach to the characters stance where we see both the hips and the shoulders tilted at different angles creating there own diagonal lines and confirming again that dynamic poses are made from facing the hips and shoulders in opposite directions. We also see the diagonals throughout the costume. I actually went through here and drew over each one I found that you can see below.

Negative space

In this next breakdown I wanted to highlight all of the negative space in the image by first tracing the negative space and then blacking out the main character. I probably could have gone further with this and blocked out everything but I decided this was enough to draw attention to the way he creates asymmetrical balance in the image. We feel the image is swaying to the right mostly because this is the largest grouping of small shapes on this side. Which counter the 2 big shapes on the left of the page. The use of the fabric breaking into different shapes and as it twists in the wind is great here and he makes sure to connect this with the right side of the page just like he did with the sniper rifle which anchors us more to the right. He also connects these shapes with the solar panel looking contraption on the bottom right. 

I also really dig how this looks when the main dark values in the piece are darkened, you can see how he balances both sides of the character with the leg wraps and the sides of her hips showing and then adds contrast with the robotic arm. 

 

Perspective

From my outline here of the perspective I would say this falls into 1 point perspective, we are looking up at the character so we get a  nice slightly foreshortened perspective of the figure. Most of the indication of the perspective seems to fall onto the raised left knee. We can also get a very clear indication of the perspective by following the lines on the object to her bottom right which seem to help tell us what the ground plane is. 

Value 

Here I broke down the values from the piece into their numeric values from the right. Like I stated before we cab see that the bottom of the page and the right of the page both act as anchors pulling us into this direction because the shapes are biggest here and he represents this with darker values. Infact he groups all of his darkest values together with the figure and the mechanical equipment her silhouette is connected to. 

When I flip back and forth between the color and black and white version, what I didnt expect is that the value of the blue sky is actually darker than the value of the desaturated orange clouds. When I flip back and forth I can see it but when I think of a blue sky I think of a light tone, this sky does have light tone to it but it would be better to describe it as having a lot of tonal variety which makes it interesting to look at. Even here you could say the top darker shade of blue connects with the figure, and he uses the highlight on the figure to push him forward from the background.

Color 

There is a clear warm vs cool color scheme going on here and its a nice extra element of contrast to include desaturated orange in the clouds and to use a darker purple for the shadow on her front. Again since Ive started matching these colors by picking them and trying to get close to the color I have seen definite improvement. Most of the colors I got right, however they just needed a tad more saturation or light/dark value adjustments. Only a couple I missed that were next to being completely black but had a touch of blue that threw me off. I also noticed another instance of simultaneous contrast in the bottom of her pants. Here we see some bounce light from the environment but notice how without the darker background color it does not look as bright on a white background.