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 . . .
After many years, I’ve finally joined the iPad club! With access to Procreate, I’m able to do a hell of a lot more work within a much quicker timeframe. Below are a few recent ones.
Several different sketches that fall under the same general umbrella; ever since the pandemic hit, I’ve been wanting to focus on creating architectural sketches, specifically with a classical/traditional aesthetic. With a bit of reading, Pinterest research and a lot of alterations, this is my first one! Also attached are some unrelated classical details that I was practicing with last week. Suffice it to say, I’m quite proud.
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 . . .
As some of you may know, I have ongoing volunteer engagement with our local (Portland) chapter of the Alzheimers Association. My first project so far; promotional illustrations for social media.
Peter Litster 