Thursday, July 16, 2015

See Michigan

These illustrations came to fruition after a conversation that Valerie and I had about wishing that we could find some sort of artwork for the cabin that evoked the WPA-era "See America" travel posters from the 1930s-40s.  The WPA's Federal Art Project artists focused mostly on western attractions, like Yellowstone and Yosemite.  I have never encountered a travel poster from the project specific to Michigan, so anything we would find would be a more modern interpretation of the old posters.

After thinking about this dilemma for a while, I decided that I could probably figure out how to replicate the WPA style using photographs I had taken from around Michigan.  After some tinkering with some settings and processing the images in a couple different programs, I arrived at the images that I used to create these illustrations.  I imagine that I shall continue to tweak the colors on a few of the images until I am satisfied, but I am happy with the overall look of these images and how they capture the spirit of their 75-year-old predecessors.

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