Stamp Art

The theme for my latest commission was travel, and more specifically East Asia. This is my final product, and I'll walk through my inspirations for the finished piece.

I was provided with a specific image as inspiration, this great photograph from user ~FurSid:

The beautiful deep reds and gold made me think about Indian dancers performing the classical dance Bharata Natyam, as seen here:

I found these women incredibly gorgeous and knew that these dancers would form the centerpiece of whatever came out of this. Adding the travel aspect to the piece took more thinking time. My girlfriend suggested to me those stickers that people used to get on their briefcases whenever they traveled to new towns and countries and it clicked in my head: postage.

As it turns out, there are several examples of beautiful postage design from India out there:

As it turns out, these dancers are already on postage.

The etched stamps drew my eye. Not only did this style remind me of contemporary artists like Sheppard Fairey, but the older forms of etching and press printing fit my limited color palate of red and gold. So I sketched out a dancer.

I'm pretty happy with it and this project has made me interested in moving on to larger scenes, with more pieces as opposed to single figure designs.