Shop Street (Leporello)

Rue des boutiques (Leporello)

During this project, I set out to explore a leporello about my favorite shops gathered together. This gave me the opportunity to combine several settings, characters and typography, together creating a journey full of wonder. I worked on lettering, which was new to me ! Since I live in a French-speaking culture (Quebec, Canada), it was natural to integrate these signs in my mother tongue. I settled for a slightly more modest project than the one proposed in the course; thus, I produced ten illustrations which, with the cover and the back, total a booklet of six double-sided pages.

- Paper and pencil ;
- Procreate on an iPad Pro ;
- Canon printer with a 60 lbs matte paper ;
- Slicer ;
- Rainer ;
- Strong Lepage glue for paper.

I wrote down on several pieces of paper all the ideas I wanted to illustrate. I then made several series and selected the final concepts.

I made the first sketches on accordion-folded paper, to balance the compositions intuitively.

On Procreate, I refine the lines properly. I don't often do this step, but I really wanted this street to be dynamic. I've reworked some of the characters.

Before I can finalize a color palette, I need to see it in action. I kept several colors from my usual palette and added several greens. I never use pure white or black. With this game plan, I'm ready to start creating the images. However, changes continue to appear and seem necessary to me.

Perhaps out of laziness (or simple curiosity), I printed the images grouped in pairs. I then cut them out, leaving a white strip for gluing as suggested. I glued everything together with white glue specially designed for paper crafts. The result is a little stiff as my paper is cardboard based. Still, there's no better feeling than seeing a project come to life.

I'm pleased with the final result. I could certainly have enriched it further to make it more substantial, but I'm still charmed by the simplicity of the proposal, without pretension. I'm not reinventing the wheel, but we shouldn't underestimate the lessons we learn from small projects.