Here is an invitation to a formal cocktail party. Personally, I don’t think there are enough formal parties any more, with a strong emphasis on formal. When I think of formal cocktail parties, I think of a scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wish all parties were as cool and swingin’ as that one. Letting Holly Golightly influence me for this project, I created an retro-ish illustration based off the part where she unknowingly places her ridiculously long cigarette holder in another party goers hat and it flames up. Hopefully it was a delightful little homage for anyone who knows that movie.
I used this scene as a reference.
My sketch of the eye patch guy.
And the rest of the scene.
Closeups, showing my inked lines over the pencil sketch.
The final. Just black and white xerox on colored paper, cheap. You can see it changed a bit from the original drawing, different treatment of the flame and smoke—and some repositioning of the characters.
To top it off and add a splash of color, I used a red marker to hand color the flame in the hat on each card.
