Gabriel Moreno

http://gabrielmoreno.com/
Gabriel Moreno is a Spanish born illustrator, painter and engraver, still living in Madrid now.  2007 was the start of his career when he was selected as being amongst the 20 new talents of illustration, by Computer Arts magazine. He has worked with a lot of agencies by now but two, more recent one include Debut Art, based in London and Bang! Bang! Studio, in Moscow.
Some of his clients include; FANTASÍAS (work at top of page), Youth Vision magazine, Los Angeles Times magazines and a huge amount more!
Moreno has made the front page of 'Illustration Now, 4' with two double-page-spreads in the contents of the book. He made a beautiful lime green, floating head illustration for Acqua Colonia to promote their  citrus and mandarin fragrance. The angle, intensity and colour is inspirational!
Most of these images are just how Gabriel Moreno works in order to capture the primary source of his illustrations, through to the scale of canvas he draws onto.
A lot of work Moreno does is personal work, the pieces on the lower half of this page are from a solo exhibition, They're possibly some of my favourite works by this amazing artist, each portrait has a different emotion which as a designer , I know is hard to capture! I like the overlays onto his imagery after he's drawn them and generally taken them into Photoshop, the colours are always intense and are fitted well into the rest of the portrait.
In Illustration Now, 4. Gabriel Moreno says 'Everything influences my work, I would say people and relations have a lot to do with it, but more important is sensuality.'
The majority of the work he creates are portraits, I see the 'sensuality' within them but he almost has a habit of intentionally ruining them after they're drawn, he adds buildings to the back of naked female figures, guitars over the faces of young males and covers them in tattoos and portrays them smoking too. Though his extra layers are often grotesque and abrupt, the use of colour and adaptation to the rest of the image, helps it work so well.
Currently in my designer career I have accepted a style of intense and delicate line work, Moreno uses this style on a huge scale and to a large degree in all of his illustrations. Look at the hair on his portraits, or even clearer, the line work in his lettering. It's so intricate and well presented, there seems to be no mistakes ever!
I like Moreno for all these reasons and more, he's a detailed portrait artist with a twist and a second hand passion for typography - my kind of artist!