Christian Ward Draws Offbeat Portraits Of Zatanna, James Bond And A Gender-Flipped “Clockwork Orange” [Art]

Illustrator Christian Ward creates images that are part portraiture, part digitally colored collage. Rather than posing his subject amidst the tools of their trade, he places symbols on their bodies and faces that hint at their true nature. Zatanna is familiar in her magic stars, and Daniel Craig's James Bond takes on a new meaning with his code name childishly scrawled against his face. For his invented characters, we must use the actual composition of the the portraits for clues to each person's nature.

Ward hand-draws his images, and then uses watercolors and Photoshop to color them. He certainly has a nice eye for color; he can use it to suggest an otherworldliness, as he does in an image of faerie queen, or to surprise us with something we would have expected, as with his purple-tuxed Bond. Meanwhile, his compositions draw from collage, fashion illustrations and graffiti art to create images filled with unusual textures.