Project 6_Visual input

Those are images from covers of the clothing catalog "The Land of Nod".
The images are built in Illustrator and blended with textures tocreate this retro-print-block look.

This tutorial introduces on how to bring textured backgrounds and use blen modes to integrate them with your Illustrator background, HERE
Notice how the artwork is making use of repeated elements with modifications of scale, orientation or slight variations.
You can do all that by using symbols: creating apiece of artwork, making it a symbol and then scaling/rotating instances... or slightly altering a symbol by duplicating it and editing it to slightly modify it.

Back cover of the "Circus Minimus" themed catalog.

The leave-shapes in the background are a repeated element: the wheels of the truck, The stars in the sign, the curved elements for the frame-pattern, The plant in the front with little bell-shaped flowers... All those are creative ideas making use of repetition in one way or another.

antinos_cover

If you look at the elements in the cover, there are repeated elements with variations, like the 4 tulips (top of the image), the male and female sun or the background vegetal motifs.

Since the background elements are following such a symmetric structure is nice to see how the ants, with a very distinctive design, follow their own rythms and directions.

Finally, see how Color codes the different levels of the image. Greens for the background,
Lighter/warmer colors infront, (lightgreen, orange and yellow)
The ants come to the front with a strong contrast theme of black with white and yellow accents.

Bright Red (we call that color Bermillion in painting) works also in the top front coloring the main props.

Notice how the white lines in the ant's body works well with the very skinny limbs emphasizing directions.

The limbs themselves form lovely rhythms.