Tim McDonagh's Illustrative Portrait (Digital Arts )

In Digital Arts magazine I came across an article called 'Portraits of Personality' which highlights seven leading UK illustrators work, in particular portraits which they have produced of iconic people. The illustrator that straight away caught my eye was Tim McDonagh and his portrait of footballer Joey Barton (see image below). The illustration depicts Joey Barton dressed as a sailor covered in tattoos with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth with his arms crossed in an intimidating stance. He is placed in the centre of the piece, and behind him is a dock and various pubs and people laid about covered in blood. The colour scheme of the piece uses various tones of blue which is effective as it gives a moonlit effect which works well as the piece is set at night. There is also splashes of red on Joey's tattoos, and then splattered across his shirt and over the people in the background which looks like blood. The contrast of the red over the blue is effective as they are contrasting colours due to the coolness of the blue and the warmth of the red. This makes your eye instantly focus on the red, giving it an importance over the other colours. The piece as a whole doesn't reference Joey Barton as being a footballer which is what he is commonly associated with, but instead depicts him as very rough and perhaps dangerous person that you wouldn't want to confront without expecting trouble. The artist has created this effect on purpose paying close attention to formal elements such as colour and composition with the rough setting and the intimidating stance and the prominant red on blue, trying to make the viewer look at the subject in a way that they perhaps normally wouldn't.