Weaving Through Design History: Victorian

Another poster with two versions. I really wanted to do one in only black and red to more closely mimic circus posters of the time that were only printed in those colors. I’m honestly torn on which version I prefer, so I provide you both of them for your viewing pleasure x3

HA! Spent like forever on this poster.

I didn’t have any experience, and much less knowledge, about the Victorian Era, so I had to look at a lot of examples and practice some patterns. While I did ink all of this with a marker, I decided to call it good with filling in only part of the border decoration with color. The ones that aren’t colored weren’t live-traced properly in Illustrator to just apply a color to the shape. And well I was feeling lazy… 😛

The Victorian Era is the easiest era to place a date on. Just go by the time Queen Victoria ascended the thrown in England on 20 June 1837 until her death, on 22 January 1901. The design of the era is easily identified through its excessive ornateness and grandiose designs. Most Victorian posters would be filled top to bottom with words in all shapes and sizes and any imaginable font. Several of the fonts, like the one I chose to mimic with my pencil, is often identified with circus posters.

Despite the headache of drawing it, this might be my favorite so far though. Also tried out a texture behind it to help make it feel more real.