Greetings From - New York

Today I decided to start making my postcards, after thinking about which different ones I wanted to take forward, I chose my new yorker design. Purely because I liked it and I knew which colour palette I wanted to use for it. It did feel quite generic to pick the statue of liberty but I wanted to start developing landmarks with the place they are located influencing them. 

I used the line tool to create a vector version of the character, i chose a light green and dark green to line it, I really struggled with getting used to how the fill worked on illustrator so the hardest challenge for me was getting that right.

When I finished the outline, I decided that the character looked much better without a dark green line running around it, so I then added shade to the character so add more dimensions and to make sure it was still defined but in a less obvious way. 

I chose to have her holding a macbook and starbucks coffee to represent that New Yorkers are both busy and trendy. 

 I began to consider the background, I tried a few different things but after a while I decided that putting in some buildings was the best decision for the time being. As I haven't yet decided how to link the 4 postcards together,  I wanted to keep whatever I did on a different layer so if needs be I could come back and delete it. Im not sure that the buildings make it too obvious but I will be coming back to it after the rest have been completed. 

I decided to make a sunset/rise in the background using the transparency and different rectangles layered on top of each other. This could be the element that links the four postcards together as I really like the effect.   I had trouble arranging things and had to spend a considerable amount of time playing with bring to front and send to back to ensure that everything looked right. 

(yellow top)

After I had finished the sunset version I wondered what it might like in reverse. I then started changing the rectangles one by one until I had an alternative version of it. 

(yellow bottom)

 I also experimented with how it would look like without the yellow sunrise to it at all, and decided against it.
I decided to choose yellow bottom as my final but when I had finished the other postcards in the series I decided to come back and edit the statue of liberty. I gave her legs and continued the dress downwards.

I am happy with the end result however in the crit afterwards, Someone pointed out that her hand was in the wrong position. If I had time to change anything it would be that, and perhaps some adding of windows to the buildings.