After Party Series

This project was created for my thesis in my last year at Sheridan College. My goal was to explore how to illustrate a room while defying traditional drawing perspective in a way that feels almost abstract, but still recognizable. I also used this experience as a way to get myself excited about drawing backgrounds and objects. I wanted to try creating illustrations with lots of personality and have them be really beautiful and fun without any people or characters. It was a great exercise in my personal style and making sure the whole piece was interesting from top to bottom, and it also served as the inspiration for my Flat Illustration Domestika course!

Here's what my moodboard looked like for this project. I did a lot of deep diving into Pinterest and Instagram for interior spaces that were bright and colorful with lots of cool patterns. The series didn't directly reference my actual home at the time, but the objects and clutter from some of the rooms were inspired by things I own so that I could add a personal touch of realism.

I created a few of these little blobby collages to start playing with how the pieces would feel abstract and what colour combinations I liked. It was a great exercise and I recommend you try out a few for yourself! It also helped me start to figure out what wall and floor combinations I liked, and inspired the wonky box-like background that I used for the series.

I did a lot of object studies to figure out how to draw mundane objects that looked weird and interesting and to get used to breaking drawing perspective rules. I also started sketching out some designs for each room, and ended up following some of these early sketches pretty closely for the finals!

My last stage of exploration before I moved on to my final pieces were these color roughs. I spent some time figuring out how I wanted to paint the finals and since this style of working was pretty new to me this little extra time I dedicated to exploring was really helpful once I was ready to dive in.