A friend of mine, who’s also a swing dancer, was recently moving to a new apartment with her boyfriend, so they were in a search for an artwork that would fit their minimalist interior design. My visual style corresponded to their needs, so we agreed to start a collaboration

She had a clear vision of how it should look like, but gave me free hands to play with the concept and the motifs. I like doing personal, custom illustrations, because there’s always some kind of story behind, I get to know the people better, learn what is special to them, and what images they like to keep in their mind.  Like always, I started with a doodle that no one can understand but me, but believe it or not, here I have set most of the parameters for the later drawing. These messy scribbles help me deal with technically precise style when I dive into Illustrator.

They had an idea of a triptych combining three different scenes, drawn in a particular style, in the specific color code. After making a few composition sketches, I decided to go with a triptych that has all three graphics of the same dimensions. It also seemed like it would be nice to have some visual connection through all three scenes, so I played with motifs a little, in order to achieve it – I wanted them to work good together, as well as separately. Isn’t this also the idea of a relationship of every kind?

This is how the first sketch looked like – this particular image was later replaced with another one, but you get the picture.

They wanted a very specific color palette (Wes Anderson inspired). I started working with colors from palette no01, but later we changed their definitions, to get more refined image in general. So, palette no2 is the one I used at the end.

Above you can see the linear drawing, before the coloring. I kept the outline only for the images of people and some other objects I wanted to emphasize. It’s a kind of decision I usually make on the spot, and it depends on the impression I want to achieve.

And the final image! He’s a professional cameraman and a free climbing enthusiast, she works in an advertising agency and loves to dance – and together they are enjoying their favorite sea bay. If you’re wondering if that’s the sea turtle in the distance – yes it is The turtle has some private meaning for them so I managed to implemented it too.

A detail of a beach scene.

And another one with the turtle.

Here’s Petra, working on some solo jazz moves.

A detail of a mountain scene.

An artwork, printed on a 200g high quality matt photo paper.

Photo credit: Igor Vuković

The size of the complete artwork was 80×80 cm – pretty big, but it looks really neat on the wall. Hope they’ll enjoy it a long time! And of course, if you’re interested in something like this, let me know!

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