The Sandlot
A personal illustration project about my love for empty lots in cities. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, it feels like there was always an empty lot to play around in, ride bikes, build forts. Now that I have kids I am looking at my own town with 8 year old eyes again, always looking for spaces in between city plans, future building sites et cetera. Today it looks like a lot of empty spaces are fenced and locked, but to the trained sandlot player there are possibilities close to home. It's an homage to my childhood and a world want for my kids.
I hope I will find time to add more sandlot to the series. For now I am including a little behind-the-scenes and technical info. Thanks for following!
Concept / Starting point
I always work better with a concise concept, the more boundaries, the better. I pictured this series for online presentation, Instagram in particular, so I started my artboard square shaped and I know small objects need toning down in detail. The empty lot is the focus of the illustration and needs to be surrounded by the city, so I made a 9-square grid, the middle square being the sandlot.
Having 9 'blocks' (quite literally, in a city setting like this), the illustration process is a ton of fun, a game almost, building a part of the city and looking for solutions to have a certain overall vibe and yet give each block as much individual attention as possible.
More rules
The most important factor in illustrating big scenes is perspective. I've been doing straight up, frontal perspective for a long time as I really like the graphic look. A city needs overview, but an exact bird's eye view is too limiting and throws a lot of fun overboard. I went for a combination of stacking frontal views as to fake an aerial perspective which to me is the perfect look for this project. Detailed enough to have fun, graphic enough to stay simple.
From here it's just letting the imagination go wild. A parking lot? A gas station? A Main Street? Apartments? Anything's possible.
Buildings
I am aiming for lots of variation in the rooftops as they play a big role in this stacked perspective. I like having realistic roads and sidewalks. The trees are placeholder as I have a more organic look in mind.
Trees & Shadows
I ended up using a Kyle Webster's photoshop brush to create the trees which to my eye look graphic enough to fit my vector work but also playful and organic and different enough, stretching my comfort zone.
I also stretched my style by adding shadows, but keeping it on brand by picking solid colours, mostly from the existing palet. It was exciting and difficult to get right. I am following the straight perspective, having all sunlight come directly from the left, casting hard shadows to the right.
People
For the people I wanted to try something different from my usual work process. Keeping the scale in mind I knew the humans in my city had to be super small and recognisable. I went for basic body shapes and simplified the outline by tracing a black and white screenshot. Up close the people look blob-like and weird, but within the context of the bigger illustration they have a really fitting simplicity and blend in nicely with the straight objects and fluffy trees.
I want the sandlot to be taken over by kids completely, saving adult figures for the rest of the city which is why I created two sizes of people.