Last week I got back from a trip of a life time, I visited Rio, Brazil during carnival season! My holiday was full of inspiring experiences that I hope to never forget, and I created 2 illustrations to try and capture just a smidge of that!

I went with the hopes to create a 2nd edition to my 2019 project ‘Views from Carnival’, however that didn’t quite go to plan… my phone was stolen during a bloco, so I wasn’t able to capture reference pictures which are very essential in my practice. Not all is lost, because I still have all of my photos from earlier on in the trip backed up, enabling me to capture some calmer moments of typical Rio streets featuring street art, lush greenery, and overcrowded electrical lines.

Both illustration are quite a bit more sketchier than my usual work, but I actually preferred not obsessing over the imperfections for this particular project, as it’s just for me rather than a client! They were also completed far quicker than my normal rate, and allowed me to continue to practice and grow my skills with Procreate. With each additional drawing, I’m feeling more confident in transitioning between Wacom and Ipad, I’ve now even used Procreate to start a few commissioned projects, and then later transitioned onto Photoshop as the image progresses. The whole purpose of buying an iPad was to allow myself to illustrate on the go, so I’m really happy with travel opportunities like this to do exactly that!

I would have liked to draw a third illustration, as we know how much I love a collection, but alas I have lots of deadlines to meet soon so should really be prioritising that for now… maybe I’ll come back to this project, but probably not.