Week 7 Inspiration & Research

Last week I went to a quilting store because I wanted to work fabric further into these character portraits I've been doing.  The nature of the project is that the inspiration is external; the inspiration comes from the textile I choose.  In general, I try not to do much research about historical or cultural patterns because once I have an idea of who this character might be, I don't really want to be influenced any further. I think I have decided that although these characters bear some resemblance to cultures in our world, and obviously the textiles I'm finding have been generated within this world, the characters are more or less fantastical.
I've been working with a couple of textiles this week as the basis for the two portraits I have started:

However, with the first one, there were a couple points at which I did get a little bit stuck and needed some outside sources of inspiration.  Although this ended up having little influence on my character, I was really drawn to this caricature for some reason.  I liked the elongated figure and the angular face.  I'm not sure if this is something I might venture into (I quite like the idea of doing fashion catalogue/pattern-style portraits).  I think I was also feeling that even though this was a fantastical character, I wanted her to be plausible, and I was doubting her costume design.  Looking at this piece helped me realise that her dress was perfectly acceptable and not too over the top.

I also reached a bit of a block when I had finished painting my figure and moved on to the background.  I wanted to imply some kind of environment but not have it rendered in any detail or detract from her appearance and prominence.  This piece by Frank Frazetta actually helped, mostly through its demonstration of atmospheric perspective as a way to mitigate the dominance of the background.