Nykurin
illustration done for Eiðis Kommuna. Faroese folklore tourist sign.
In short the Nykur, a creature resembling a magic horse, dragged all the big rocks to the cemetery in Eiði, to form a beautiful stone wall. When all the stones had been assembled, the Nykur was about to take it's leave, when two kids got onto its back, they thought it was a horse. Shortly after more and more people came to. Whenever a person sat on the Nykur's back there would be room for one more, and so it was, until all the people in Eiði were on it’s back. When a child accidentally mentioned it's name by confusing it with another word, the Nykur shook everyone off its back and leapt into the water and vanished.
I wanted to keep it rough and dirty looking as it
compliments the current signs that are in use.
I added a norselike pattern to the Nykur to have him look more mythological.
I tried to convey a sort of dreamy, fantastical feel with the blur effects and cromatic offset, as well as blending the shapes in and out of each other, like with the hair of the horse.
Innitially tried to explore the style of the illustrations on the original landmark signs. We went a bit back and forth between that and a more colorful and expressive look. We ended up blending the two styles.
VizRef is a brilliant reference app that I keep in splitscreen on the iPad together with Procreate when I need it. Super simple drag and drop or copy/paste between browser, VisRef and Procreate.
Proccess 01
Process 02
This was the colorful version
I played with a couple of inverted layers to get the desired look that hinted at the style of previous signs. I wanted to keep the white color of the norse pattern.
Final
