Keeping Pace

"city walkers"   visit stevensalerno.com

Even though I have lived in Manhattan for so many years now I've lost count, I am still always impressed with seeing and experiencing the energy and rhythm of all the people walking through the city.

Posted here is a simple graphic image I had created a while ago as part of a series of advertising images for the sock company GoldToe, for their "All Walks of Life" print ad campaign featuring my various silhouetted characters bustling about the streets heading to their unknown destinations, seen against a deep peach colored skyline. (Though, this particular image posted here never made it past the comp stage and therefore did not end up being one of the actual final printed ads.) The characters were executed with black gouache, then embellished in Photoshop. The background consists of a photo I shot of a custom hand-made paper with embedded leaves that I had bought, melded with another photo I shot of wood paneling from a construction site.

I enjoy making images of silhouetted characters, and have done so in many of my illustration assignments in the past. I can actually remember being 8 years old and making similar such silhouetted drawings and thinking to myself what a great method it was of supplying very specific visual information about a figure's character, but without having to actually show any detail.... I thought then that it was a fun, cool way to make images, and now here I am 40-something(!) years later still using the same technique.

See all my illustration samples at stevensalerno.com