Salena Barnes (@salena.barnes) is my pick for today’s talent!
If you don’t know what A Year on Talents is here you can find the description of the project: A Year on Talents Project
Salena is an illustrator and concept artist based in Berlin. She creates characters, illustrations and art assets in the fields of marketing, games and music. On her profile you’ll be able to find a ton of very very well made characters. To be fair in comparison to many other artists profiles it looks to me like every artwork she posts on her feed is finalized and perfectioned up to a certain level that’s insane to maintain in the long run.
Her favorite subject seems to be women, with an accent on black women in particular. All her girls look different cause she paints them with a high variety of clothing styles, haircuts, body shapes and poses. I especially like all the facial expressions, the natural fleshy and full lips common in black ladies are beautiful to see, a great element together with the eyes to paint fantastic faces.
The first pic is a wonderful example of how she was able to mix a more detailed face with a loose and abstract foreground without falling in the trap of making two disconnected pieces of art on top of each other. To say I love the hair style and how she painted it is probably too little, I mean she gave it this defining shape correctly identifying what’s the real part of it that lets you imagine the whole cut, and now even if it’s “flat” and without details my mind can’t do anything but imagine exactly one kind of hair for this woman. Extremely powerful!
The second image I wanted to include cause she painted this awesome poster (pssst.. on her profile there’s one more!!) for Disney’s Soul, a fantastic movie I watched a few weeks ago that left me with a smile and good feelings. The light coming from the “O” looks great lighting up his shoulders and I find the piano keys floating around on the edge to create an imaginary connection with the inner spirit of the music to be superb!
What do you think about Salena? Do you also love what’s going on here?
I’d like to discuss today’s talent with you in the comments below!
If you think Salena deserves a follow or you wanna see more I’ve got you covered
Instagram: @salena.barnes
ArtStation: Salena Barnes
Website: salenabarnes.com
Behance: Salena Barnes
I hope you liked it, and see you tomorrow for the next episode!
