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 . . .
My first corporate client! I had the unexpected pleasure of being recruited by a local studio to help with an illustration project for Timber Loop, a new service from Timberland Boots intended to help keep their products out of landfills. I executed the Infinity-loop graphic showing the boots at the various stages of disassembly and/or repair. You can view the full page here.
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…
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.
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 