This one was a fun one to do.
A movie about a culture and it???s food? Awesome!
I get to do food illustrations? Fantastic!
Anything related to food in general? Sign me up!
Cuban Food Stories was a documentary type movie that focused on the food, society, and culture of Cuba. Since this was definitely going to be a food-centric type of movie I decided to go with food illustrations for this poster. I thought about actual photography however I don???t have the time or skill to reproduce authentic Cuban cuisine, and photoshopping stock images together didn???t seem to bring the concept to justice. Which is why I opted to create food illustrations instead. ????
For this poster, I relied a lot on photo references since my knowledge about Cuban food is extremely limited. Though that task itself proved to be quite the hurdle as I had no point of reference to determine whether the photo I was looking at was actual Cuban food, or if it was just an image of another type of dish that happened to be tagged incorrectly. For the most part, I used images that were actual footage and screenshots from the movie and its trailer, that way it was basically a guarantee. For the other images, I found they were associated with recipes and food bloggers that were either Cuban themselves or at the very least extremely familiar with the culture and its food.
In terms of the concept of the poster since it covers culture and food, I wanted to have this feeling of a group of people gathering together about to have a feast. So basically a table of food. For the illustrations, I took my photo references and sketched out the dishes and put them through Photoshop where I worked on the lineart and then filled them in with colour. The great thing about Cuban food was how vibrant the dishes were so it definitely made colouring and shading quite the treat. You wouldn???t believe how many times I had to stop and regroup because all the dishes just looked too appetizing.
All in all, it was a fun poster to do and was one of those kinds of projects where once I received the brief I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Ideas came easy this time around. This poster also rekindled my joy in doing food illustrations. Though the illustrations represent the food they’re supposed to, I still have a long way to go before I can create a food illustration so beautifully rendered that people automatically start salivating. But nonetheless, I continue my upward struggle.
For now, that’s all I have. Until next time!