Character ideas 2

I have been drawing characters for the last couple of days and this one I think might be a bit of a breakthrough, not that I like the drawing itself but it gave me some ideas of composition and character interaction. I think the characters need to be more abstract, I would like to extend and manipulate the characters features in relation to each other to accentuate scale or movement.

Keith Negley's characters often have hugely extended or contorted limbs that he uses to communicate his narratives. In this case the limbs exaggerate to movement of the cowboy falling off the horse. Even though the cowboys face is mostly covered we get the idea that the fall is or is going to be painful from the expression shown on his mouth. Keith Negley has illustrated the horse moving off the side of the page, the reader knows its a horse from the information on the page and can see how fast it is going from the angle of the tail and the legs, Having the horse only partially on the page exaggerates the movement of the horse, anything in the middle of the frame looks stationary even if we know it is travelling at speed. The placement of the horse also opens up more space in the composition and ensures that the cowboy id the focal point of the composition.