One day on Instagram I saw footwear designer Salehe Bembury ask someone to illustrate a poster for him for ComplexCon. So I intuitively decided to take a shot at this project. I started with a blank sketch of a photo of him sitting at a desk and moved it to a digital rendering.
With the digital rendering, I wanted to make it seem like he was sitting at his booth presenting his product(s) or almost like it was "The Salehe Bembury Show." It ended up being a very interesting composition. I wanted to include every single detail that I could ooze out of this. I included the ComplexCon logo and went into intricate detail with him as well. The swirling lines in the background were inspired by his signature fingerprint that you see in a lot of his designs, which represents his brand identity. One of my favorite pieces of this was the illustration of his shoe the Pollex Croc, "Kuwata," which was one of the hottest shoes of 2022.
I thought this brightened up the color composition even more and gave the detail even more of a highlight. I also love how it looks as if he is highly admiring his work above him.
I had a blast creating this! And thought even more about the option of graphic design advertisement as a result of how much fun this was to create.
