Exercise: Abstract Cities

For this exercise I had to create abstract book covers for guide books of 10 cities.

The cities are:

Madrid
Malmo
Managua
Manchester
Manhattan
Marrakech
Marseilles
Melbourne
Montreal
Mumbai

The book covers need to be A5 size in landscape orientation.

I’ve started my research with looking up some pictures of each of the cities on Pinterest, then when I had a good feel for each of them, I have proceeded creating the abstractations of each of these.

The biggest challenge I found during this challenge is that I only used rectangles to create my art. I thought this limitation was quite interesting though, and enjoyed this exercise.

I have developed a technique by about the 3rd piece, whereby I was working on a layer with the visibility turned off, and creating blocks around objects that in my base images, that I thought were essential to capturing the essence of each of these cities. Between drawing two blocks I picked a new colour from my base picture to encapsulate the feeling of each of these images. I have tried starting with objects in the background and coming nearer to the viewer every sep of the way. I enjoyed this, as sometimes when I turned the layer visibility back on, I was quite surprised by the results. I think this technique has also allowed me to work quicker, as I wasn’t getting lost in the details.