Wylie Elise Beckert Illustration

And now for something different Posted on 29 Jul 2011

A (belated) UPDATE: My design was selected! With a few color tweaks suggested by the BAS (which made it SO much better), my poster graced the Paint Bangor Day festivities!

Wow, I've been incredibly busy for the past week or two (busier than usual, even). My new listing on Hire an Illustrator (www.hireanillustrator.com - review to come!) has generated a lot of interest, and the resulting inquiries have been keeping me occupied.

Fortunately I got a few spare moments to finish up the above poster design - an entry for the poster contest for the very excellent Bangor Art Society's "Paint Bangor Day," and a rare foray into vector-based art.
You may be asking yourself, "why Paul Bunyan?" Well, Bangor being the cultural center that it is, is just so happens to have THE LARGEST Paul Bunyan statue in the country. His fiberglass figure, some 30 feet tall, blots out the sun just a few blocks from downtown. You may also be asking yourself "Wait - isn't Paul Bunyan's fabled homeland Minnesota, not Maine?" Well, yes. Yes it is.

Geographical issues aside, I used the statue as the basis for this poster design. I put it together pretty quickly (see: incredibly busy), so little has changed from my original drawing:


Or even from the napkin sketch that inspired it:


I traced over the pencil drawing in Illustrator (to avoid having to do any more work on a 1.5GB photoshop file than necessary) then painted in the colors and shading in Photoshop. Whether or not this ends up being the winning design, I'm happy with how it turned out. And hey, if they don't want it here, maybe I'll give Minnesota a call.

If you're in Bangor this fall, be sure to check out the Paint Bangor Day festivities - a great opportunity to create (or buy!) some fast & meaningful art to benefit the Bangor Art Society. More info available from the Bangor Art Society.