Character Design analysis: Tatiana Vetrova

 

Design 

I really appreciate this design aesthetic of this witch drawing because it plays with negative space in a really interesting way all throughout the piece. 

Here we see a very clear contrast between the two sides of her. One is "infected" or "possessed" by some sort of spell or virus that controlls half her body. Here we see the first of the repeating shapes throughout the design which is the use of the triangle. These triangle daggers shoot out from her side and  on the other side of the design we see the repeat use of the triangle in the design of the dagger that hangs above the air of its holster. One could even say that her general shape is very triangular since her breast and hips have that kind of slant to them. 

Another repeat element we have is the circle. We see the circle in 3 major points, which coincidently form a triangle in and of themselves. The circle on the knife, the circle in her palm and the circle on her head. Notice that they are all different sizes which goes back to the idea of varying shape sizes to keep it interesting. The last couple of repeating elements goes back to our layer caking idea:

The red shapees on her chest and hips get smaller and more dispersed the further we get away from the head with the biggest red shape being her head and the symbol hanging above her head.

If we then look at medium shapes we see the rope that ties around her body in various locations as a medium shape. We see this medium shape on her legs and torso which seem to almost hold her together. For smaller shapes we can see repeated staple like shapes that go diagonally across her body and point up to her face and snake across her torso. The smallest shape though probably goes to the tattoo on her left arm and palm that is a interesting contrast to the other arm that has no tattoo but has a similar small shape in the form of a rope  wrapped around her wrist. 

Counterbalance is another thing we can see in this piece. We have small and medium shapes clustered together on one side of her body while the rest of her suit acts as a open purple shape that holds the small and medium shapes on the design. One could even say this about the face, and as a side note I love the way the hair and the break in her skull (mask?) merge into one shape which loses its edges as it turns awway from us giving us a interesting contrast of hard to soft edges in this piece. 

Find more of Tatiana Vetrova's work here