Portrait of Hayao Miyazaki

Ghibli Jam 2014 was held on the Tumblr platform and was the first of any sort of "event" I participated in online such a capacity. Rather than creating work for one of his many properties/creations/films, I focused on the man himself.

Miyazaki is a huge influence in my state of mind and how I approach art and the craft. I owe him a lot and now more than ever I feel I am using his work to help guide my designs for story and character creation.

The work was a blast to see through completion. My greatest and main goal for any portrait is to capture the likeness of the subject and I felt I tackled it well here. As usual, I played up the colors and used a blue background to help frame the warm colors of the face - as do the hair and shirt.

My big successes were getting the shading and presentation of the teeth and glasses.