Luigi Lucarelli is another artist I found on DeviantART and I really love his work too. He focuses on character design and is known for his creative and imitative designs. He sticks to digital mediums, relying on pencil like mark making (produced digitally) and applies bright and bold colors.
His character development is what really inspires me though. They are so expressive and so individual, each character he draws is telling their own little narrative which is open to the audience to decifer. This is very close to what I want to achieve with my illustrations, but leaving little narrative clues to encourage the audience to make up their own minds on what is going on.
This one above for example has some subtly comedy implied by the bird expression. His stark stare is coupled with the serene but alert expression on the female character and it makes the scene really humorous. Who knows what the bird has seen in the distance? And are we intended to be the one the girl is looking to the side at? This kind of interaction is really fun for an audience and is something I hope to include in my monster book.
