PARCHED

Job: Art print
Client: Private commission

CONCEPT: Create an original composition inspired by the desolate social landscape of recent years, this portrait of a survivor captures the mood of adaption and isolation.

CHALLENGE: Capture what social distancing felt like too many with a single character and setting.

SOLUTION: Adobe Illustrator was the perfect choice for this scene thanks to its clean vector editing capabilities. Finding the perfect specimen that offered the cold unwavering stare of an adaptive animal was first, the Turkey Vulture. I outlined its features and added layers of texture; sun on the feathers, and subtle shading. Drafting a porous stone perch underneath the bird’s talons indicated the foreground. Next was the location, a most inhospitable environment the Mojave Desert’s Death Valley. I layered four sprawling ridges of terrain lightening and slightly blurring them as they receded into the horizon. Behind them, I placed a burnt orange sky fading up lightly and a bright yellow sun with a vast radiant blur engulfing the landscape like waves of heat.

RESULT: The final piece expressed the feeling of struggling to survive in uncomfortable surroundings.