Progress continues to be made! I just completed the basketball court portion of the poster. Since one of my themes for this poster is summer in the city, I knew I needed to add some outdoor sports and basketball is truly an urban sport. I decided to dirty up the court a little by putting cracks in the pavement and backboard. I feel like every city basketball court is never perfect. When I originally drew the sketch for the court, I had more players. Then, I drew a more detailed sketch, but made a mistake…the players were way too big in comparison with the rest of the illustration. So, I shrunk them down, and for now, I’m sticking with this configuration. I still feel like there is some empty space I can play with on the left or behind the fence, but I want to see how everything else turns out.

In terms of the details of this illustration, I’m trying to work smarter. I wanted to make sure I used high socks with stripes, but they take some time to look just right. When I completed the first pair, I just copied and pasted them on to the next player and made adjustments accordingly. I’d probably still be working on it if I didn’t figure that out. I’m pretty proud of the player I created in the red, white, and blue at the top. I decided to give him some extra chest and armpit hair. At first, I randomly assigned numbers to the players, but I decided to change it to 2, 1, and 2 to reference the Manhattan area code. (I did that after posting this picture.) Finally, the guy sitting down is my reference to Ghostbusters. I was wary of adding Slimer or Bill Muray in full Ghostbusters gear, so I settled on what you see above. That was the smart move.