“Stargazing party” reportage illustration
Illustration I made during the Editorial Illustrator’s Playbook course at Inkygoodness Collective, where we had to document a nearby location where people gather.
For years, I wanted to visit the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, about 20 minutes from my home, and this finally gave me the motivation to go exploring. I visited the observatory three times to do some observational sketching, and had a few short conversations with staff and visitors who were curious about my artistic behaviour. During the first visit, there were a few actors re-enacting historical figures from the observatory’s history and sharing facts with visitors.
We were meant to try a reportage approach, including maps and little factoids as if we were making a visual diary. I tried a few different interpretations of that, toying with the idea of astronomical maps as opposed to geographical ones, as well as one composition with some of those actors and various artifacts.
I got some feedback from others in the cohort that they enjoyed the mythological animals, so I tried taking that further in the colour stage.
However in the end, I settled on something less fantastical but still close to an observatory’s purpose, recreating a stargazing party during a meteor shower, and keeping it free of text to give it a feeling of quiet grandeur. (I unfortunately couldn’t visit the location at night and these parties were on their current programming schedule, but I did find some great reference photos on Instagram).
