Seek & Find: London

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Seek and Find: London
Isometric illustration for Cultura Inglesa Festival

I was commissioned to make a big panel for Cultura Inglesa Festival, the biggest british culture festival in Latin America showing traditional and modern sites from London. The main theme for this year's edition was "Games" and I decided to create a big "seek and find" illustration (16 ft x 8 ft) with lots of gaming references from nowadays and from the past.

People were encouraged to try to find funny characters and situations among the buildings, like the Queen playing Battleship against Prince Charles in Buckingham Palace, David Bowie going to Madame Tussauds, the legendary crows from Tower of London or two guys playing Hash in the OXO Tower.

I've drawn 40 different classic sites from London, like: The London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Waterloo Underground Station, Trellick Tower, Wembley Stadium, Shakespeare's Globe, Battersea Power Station, lots of museums and galleries, etc. I love detailed drawings that can show the interesting aspects about each place: so, I've made a huge research before the sketching process, keeping pictures, maps and texts with curiosities about each site.

There's also one special aspect of London that I've always loved and wanted to show in the illustration: the incredible and strong mix of traditional and modern culture in the same place. So, I've looked for a good balance between historic / traditional buildings (like Westminster Palace and Royal Albert Music Hall) and new skyscrapers (like The Shard and Gherkin).

The audience was invited, also, to search many references from gaming culture, like: a Candy Crush big screen, some Tetris pieces falling from the sky, a big Mahjong sculpture, some Jenga and Scrabble wooden pieces and many other toys and games.

A bit of my process for this panel can be seen below. First, I started making a colorful digital sketch using Photoshop. Also, I made some lists and appointments about possible characters, situations and extra details that would be available in the final illustration. The raw linework you see below was not used in the final file: I prefer to achieve, first, a good atmosphere in sketching stage, with a nice composition and color scheme.

After sketching stage was done, I started creating all the scenario in black-and-white using a mix of Illustrator and Photoshop technics. After the scenario was done, I started the last step: adding lots of people! I love to draw them in different sizes, shapes, colors and interacting with the sites I've drawn. After all drawing part is made, I add the colors to buildings and people in Photoshop.