an illustration installation,

downtown Victoria, British Columbia 

 

 

In 2020 I had an opportunity to engage in a project called "Storefronts Victoria" with the City of Victoria, BC. 

 

Not only is Victoria my hometown, but it is also the capital city of BC, located on the southern end of Vancouver Island, surrounded by the sea. 

 

The project called for designing an ever-repeating pattern that could be seamlessly tiled, to create a vinyl wrap for vacant storefront windows in the city centre. 

 

Drawing on my love of octopus and our proximity to the sea on all sides, I went with an Octopus pattern. 

 

Since this is Victoria, named of course for Queen Victoria, a lot of Victorian-era architecture remains, scattered throughout the region, but most notably present in the residential areas radiating out from downtown. 

 

I used this inspiration to reimagine a Victorian patterned wallpaper, with the twist of octopus! 

 

 

The octopus is one that I originally drew in pen and ink. 

 

I scanned the drawing, re-drew it in Procreate, converted it to a vector and then worked on the tiling aspect. This was a little tricky, due to he complexity of the illustration. 

 

There are a lot of parts on an octopus... mostly suckers! Lining those up to accomplish the seamless tile was intricate!