My latest illustration for Eliza Magazine is of the Hong Kong born actress, Nancy Kwan.
When I first saw pictures of her I couldn't help noticing how beautifully smooth and perfect her skin looks, so the idea to turn her into a China doll was almost instant.  I am also a fan of Chinese blue porcelain and thought it would be a fun challenge to translate the qualities of those art forms into the illustration.

Research and reference always comes into play for jobs like this, and while the interweb hunt can be quite tedious, I really enjoy learning about the subjects I'm researching, and will constantly find myself sidetracked on interesting tid-bits I find along the way, such as this video of Miss Kwan on the gameshow "What's My Line?" from the early 60's.

And for fun I made a little reference board out of some of the inspriations I found for the piece.

As can happen with how I work, I ended up with two versions of the illustration as I tried different approaches.  Below is the initial black and white sketch I did and the unused, alternate version of the final illustration.

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