New Illustrations - Horses & Boats!

I'm very late to the party but... Happy New Year you wonderful lot!

I'm finally getting around to sharing these illustrations I finished for an advertising campaign early last year. The two illustrations were completely out of my comfort zone (no detailed fashion or portraits in sight!) and took many painstaking and stressful hours of work. I absolutely loved the challenge though. I definitely gained a lot from the experience and can proudly say the prospect of drawing crowds no longer fills me with fear - I had no idea where to start and when I finally realised how I could make it work, the feeling was amazing (such relief!)

The client was a London Estate Agents who, using happenings in the property market, predicted that March (last year) would be the prime time to put a house on the market. They wanted to use large-scale, famous events in March (Cheltenham Races & The Boat Race) to help steer their campaign. The first event was Cheltenham Race Festival, for which a tagline "put your house on the market, it'll be a one horse race..." was to be used.

It was great to have the opportunity to work on such an unusual (for me anyway!) brief. 

I had quite a lot of freedom in the initial stages, drawing up a number of roughs and working with the in-house designer to finalise a rough to take to colour. Even the colour took me away from the illustration work I've become accustom to. The hardest part for me was being unable to use the detail I work into my portraits with the crowd. It would have been completely unfeasible so this meant forcing myself to work almost in the opposite way, using as little detail as possible but, at the same time, maintaining my own personal style.

(Below are some of the rough workings I drew out before we decided upon the final imagery).

The second poster was for The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Again with this piece, I needed the context to be true to life (both of these events take place at the same places every year so needed to be somewhat recognisable). This meant researching the course and trying to produce imagery that wasn't going to be a million miles away from what we would see in person. 

I loved illustrating the houses and incorporating texture - I think that was definitely my favourite part of this illustration. It was the boat and the crowd again that I found the hardest to get my head around.

I was really happy with the way both the illustrations turned out - I hope you like them too! Tomorrow I will be sharing two portrait illustrations I completed for the same company so check back to see them. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post - I hope you like what you see, but please let me know what you think...