A draft for an upcoming essay collection due to be published soon by a friend of mine. It didn’t make the cut, but I’m very happy with the laurel wreath; creating it, however, was easier said than done, even with a symmetry guide. There’s a reason so many designers rip off the United Nations wreath and hope nobody notices! It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a mathematical formula for creating perfectly-aligned laurel leaves for this, but I’ve yet to find it . . .
Some Wes-Anderson-inspired luggage tags for Hotels that don’t exist, but could exist.
Despite my dearth of posts, rest assured that I’ve definitely been productive as I slowly learn to take full advantage of my iPad’s capabilities. Most of my work has been going straight to Instagram, but I intend to be more consistent across platforms in the future. Here’s what I’ve been up to since I last posted…
Care for some tea? A quick little project for a friend’s podcast, produced and adapted from the rough sketch below.
Good tips from the Alzheimer’s Association of Oregon and SW Washington, an excellent organization that I’m still working with them on a volunteer basis. Six down, four to go!
Continuing the theme of vector line art against black. What I love about the orb as an article of royal regalia is the inherent minimalism. The top two quadrants represented Europe and Asia respectively, with the bottom half representing Africa– the only known continents at the time, with a cross naturally placed atop the whole business. I’m exceptionally proud of how this one turned out, both in terms of technique and atmosphere.
Much as I love it, I decided to take a break from wrangling scanned lineart in Photoshop, and instead to experiment with a very popular style of vector illustration that I’ve been wanting to try for a while. The results? So clean! So mathematical and precise! And a message we can at least aspire to.
Cityscapes have been a long standing gap in my range of skills, partially because they take a lot more planning and references then just a quick character sketch. Perspective and scale has to be applied, windows have to align, and foreground, middle-ground, background, and all that good stuff has to be accounted for. Although it definitely taxed my patience at times, I feel my efforts paid off handsomely in this case, with the line-based, monotone style successfully evoking the midcentury look that I was going for. Next time around I’ll be adding higher contrast to the colored shadows, more detail, and maybe even some human figures. To be continued . . .
Peter Litster 