Steve's Birthday

I was commissioned by one of my friends to create an illustration of her husband in his favourite street of Amsterdam. The trick with this illustration was to combine all of these visual elements without drawing a three dimensional gigantic picture (as the restaurant and the couple's apartment were on different sides of the street.) My friend Janine sent me these photographs as reference for the project:

This is Steve's bike.

Then I began to sketch out my ideas. I thought of a flat image showing the city and Steve crossing a bridge however we decided that this might be too much for one illustration and the focus should be more on the specific street that is his favourite.

 

So I narrowed down the idea to this: I placed the apartment building right next to Steve's favourite restaurant (even though that's not actually what the street looks like) Janine and I both thought it tied together the elements perfectly. 

 

Here is the final illustration: Steve on his bike carrying flowers (to Janine). This is a more subtle suggestion that I highlighted with the pink color. Steve, the flowers and their apartment door are all red suggesting that there is a connection between the three.