Beauty Within the Abandoned

My first installments in this series of poster concept art follow two alien creatures, Constance and Benjamin, who are exploring this post apocalyptic Earth from their tiny point of view. This world is covered in human things frozen in time that have taken on new life because of the nature that's grown around it. Constance and Benjamin are here strictly for business, collecting and taking samples from various earthly trinkets in the hope of discovering what it was like to be human while also repurposing the objects they’ve found in ways to help them during their adventures.

 My idea for this series comes from my fascination with human waste, trash and over consumption and how that part of being human interacts with nature around us. I tend to get lost in the idea that our plastic will outlive us. Every plastic toothbrush I’ve ever owned, you’ve ever owned, is still on Earth today and will continue to sit for many years even after we’re gone. We all leave a footprint behind us that we let nature deal with. We’re living in our own human time capsule. 

So I wanted to challenge myself to present these thoughts in a different light, to a broader audience. 

Bringing attention to over consumption and recycling… but making it cute and fun and narrative

Like, What if everything all around us stopped suddenly and we let nature consume all our belongings? What would it look like if our human made clutter sits long enough to have nature grow around it? What if we saw beauty in everything we consume to prevent more waste from sitting and instead being repurposed. So, what would it be like for tiny cute creatures to explore this new overgrown world? 

Green Light

This piece “Stop Light” is the first in the series. It illustrates our travelers first evening after landing on earth. They decide to take shelter for the night in the stop light representing the beginning and end of one journey to the next. They’ve spent a long while traveling through space and have finally reached their destination, Earth. Constance is eager to explore, thinking about what discoveries lie ahead. While Benjamin is just excited thinking about what new and interesting friends he’ll make on this planet. 

Bottle Cap Crowning

This Second piece “Bottle Cap Crowning” illustrates Benjamin finding a new friendly creature, a bird. Benjamin treats his new friend as royalty and presents his bottle cap treasure to her as a crown. Constance diligently takes notes on the new creature while it’s distracted by Benjamins goofy little game.

At this point in creating the series, I wanted to use a pattern I had made in each piece to add a cohesive repeating element. If you look closely at the window and wall in the background you can see how the pattern is used. The patterns in the other pieces are used in the foliage and water.

Night Train

In the “Night Train” piece, I wanted to zoom out and play with the perspective and scale of the environment. I like the size comaprison of the soda can or bottle compared to the size of the train. I wanted the space to feel dreamlike and whimsical. I loved playing with how vibrant and colorful I could make this night time scene look. 

Paper Boat

In this piece “Paper Boat” features Constance and Benjamin traveling downstream in a paper boat canoe that’s the perfect size for them. I really wanted to play around with water in this final piece. I was curious how I’d illustrate the balance between trash and nature underwater and how hidden or obvious I could make the objects appear in the current. I really liked stretching what I could do with the colors too with the red lilies to have a strong contrast with the water.

I plan on expanding this concept to follow more of their journey on earth and the challenges they may face. I’d like to continue to explore the ways they’d repurpose our human things and how our objects would creatively assist them! And of course continue to expand the look and idea around this world of trash and nature.