Behind the Scenes: Holiday Shop Illustration

That time of year! The older I get, the more I enjoy the holiday time and the calm that comes towards the end of the year. And I really like to watch some of the older classic movies, like White Christmas, Holiday Inn or Shop Around the Corner.

I really enjoy the atmosphere of the high street shopping and understated nature of gift shopping back then. No PS5's, no Apple Stores, no endless shopping malls. And no online.

Just a cozy shop with tasteful decorations. What's it gonna be? A scarf? Engraved lighter? All packaged in a nice wrap or a gift wooden box. All of this just reeks character.

Or maybe I'm just really getting old :)

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In any case, this is the sentiment I wanted to capture this time, so I let Buble do his thing and dived into endless stream of reference hunting. 

It's getting harder and harder. Once endless stream of inspiration turned into an endless stream of AI generated images. 
Now, I think the AI might have it's place in the inspiration process, but please give me a switch to be able to turn it off on Pinterest or Google images if I want to.

Anyway, after combing through those, I was able to get some nice shots and illustration with a classic Christmas theme so I moved them into PureRef and cropped out details that I like. 

When sketching, I really like to be methodical. That's why I often check back with the cropped details in PureRef and use it as a sort of a palette of details. Just to make sure I don't forget something I liked in the references. Certain type of lamp, or a door detail.

I tried to balance the composition, so your eye can travel upwards in a zig-zag way starting with the car. That would of course mean, that I have to make the car vibrant and rich in color to draw to focus there on a first sight.

Then it would naturally jump on tree, and then upwards on the shop sign. I thought a shop named "Around the Corner" would bear a nice ring to it and nice reference to a classic movie.

I tried to keep all the details and decoration in a vintage style, including the old Ford Transit to underline the original inspiration and capture the mood I had in mind when started.

You can watch the full process video on Youtube.