DEATH & LIFE

I accidentally saw this picture and felt there is strong use of hot colours and as a result it leads to strong and attractive impression for the viewers.

The artist of that picture is Tom O'Malley, he graduated from a University with BA in Illustration. If you take a look of his portfolio, you will see that he often adds some kinds of straight lines and circles into his work as his own style.

The picture above was drawn with flowers growing from the mouth, the orange lines added around them to effectively increase the brightness for hope in life. And the whole picture with the man's head is like a plant with roots, leaves and flowers.

If you see in more details, you can see half of the head was coloured with bright level colours (bright orange, yellow, red), which we already know they represent for pure, hope, love ... And the other one was coloured with darker levels of those colours.

The contrasts bewteen two parts and the main "plant shape"created a link between life and death. The head's direction also has its meaning, looking up, receiving all the sun lights and beauty of life though it's known there is death behind anytime. An optimistic meaning.

Source & Reference:
Computer Arts
Tom O'Malley Portfolio