“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. In the end, I settled on something closer 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).