The first step in creating this poster was to visit the Pompeii exhibit at the ROM and to take photos of all the objects that I could see myself potentially using in my poster.
These are the photos that I took from my visit to the Pompeii Exhibit at the ROM.
More photos of artifacts and objects that I found interesting.
I narrowed the photos down to the ones I felt had the most potential and created thumbnails by hand.
I finally settled on this mosaic titled "Portrait of a Lady". Although I knew that rendering a face would be a little more difficult I decided to go for it anyway! I was really drawn to the portrait and found myself wondering about this woman and her life. The next step was to choose the colour of Canson paper that I wanted to work on. I was deciding between the rust and black. Although I think black would have been much more dramatic, I went with the rust paper because of the earthy tones that I felt suited the theme of the project very well.
I made a colour palette on my chosen colour to see which tones I would be using for my poster.
This is the mockup that I created in Illustrator. It gave me some idea of what my final product would look like. I also made a grid over the mockup which helped me in the drawing stage.
I then started drawing! Square by square. As predicted, the nose and the mouth took me the longest to get right. When I got frustrated with getting those right, I moved on to the text and the logo. I used a fine Sharpie for those.
I created the cracked earth lines around the lady because I felt they suited the theme and added balance to my composition.
I created the cracked earth lines around the lady because I felt they suited the theme and added balance to my composition.
Voila, my final poster! I'm somewhat satisfied with the result. If I had to re-do it, I would try it on black paper.
