IQBR 1.1

However although this history is good and proves my product would sell there are some issues. I’ve almost flooded the market with the current styles having sold about 80 or so of the half dozen designs I created. There are only so many people who you can sell to in a small market town who want such a product. The other issue is I need Illustrator and a lot of time to produce these posters and you need the subject matter. I’d used up most if not all the local beauty spots as subjects and scratching my head as to any more locations I could use

The idea now is to make simpler more stylised images or what is often referred to as Linescapes. These are modern, paired down images using a minimum of flowing lines and bold simple colour blocks to evoke a scene. Similar to some of the more Art Nouveau inspired rail posters which were less of a classic style and more modern for the era. These could create in either Illustrator or another cheaper or free vector App. Vector with its infinitely scalable images was still my preferred format. As before I could scale these up to poster size or down to key fob size as required with no loss of detail. This made re-purposing images so much easier. I decided that my first image would be a skyline on the town

At the time skylines of big cities were very popular and I though that although skyscrapers and iconic buildings are impressive so is the skyline of my town with its impressive Minster. So I’ve created a simple bold skyline, looking across the cornfield to the town. The Minster almost centre, but not quite so as to bring in the ‘rule of thirds’. And again the rule of thirds with the foreground and sky. The image is blocked out by bold colours, mustard for the cornfield, strong and bold greens for the trees, only 2 shades of green used to keep the palette low, with the further trees being the darker to give depth. The sky is down in concentric circles of strong blue from sky blue fading out to a darker shade in the upper left corner

Although very modern and almost childish in its style the image had impact, exactly what I was after. It also worked, sometimes you can explain why an image works but it did. Maybe it was The Minster which in real life is sandstone yellow tinged with green after years of heavy rain causing verdigris to grow on its tower, in my images it was harmonious with its surroundings as I coloured it the same mustard as the cornfield. I endeavoured to make all the natural elements with curved lines and all the man made ones straight. So The Minster although the same colour as the cornfield did contrast with its outline being angular and the trees and sky being rounded and flowing. The tractor tracks through the cornfield again being straight and angular as they are man made, and the way I brought them in from the bottom right to almost the centre of the image, drawing the eye as I had intended. These are things you need to consider when creating artworks, you need to consider composition, colour balance and create interest and flow through the image. As an artist and not a photographer you have more control over this aspect and can apply ‘artistic license’. Not that you can’t do that with photography, filters, effects and by choosing the composition, but still it’s easier when you have complete control over the outcome. The other advantage with working on a computer over canvas and paint is that you can easily and quickly correct your mistakes. You can also resize and recompose at will, saving several variations of your work which you can revisit later or have friends or relatives review

I’ve since also made a few variations by substituting the colours and adding a glowing moon changed it to a nightscape. By adding a rainbow making a lockdown “hope” variant. And by removing all colour completely but leaving the lines as a faint .5 point (may have been less I can’t remember exactly) outline that can be coloured in. This last version I made available for free download on my website for people to make their own version, a bit like an adult colouring book, and school children to have a crack at. Some of these were posted in the window of a local shop for others to see and I was glad to see them taken up myself