Illustrating Madison

Last summer I traveled to Madison, the Capitol of Wisconsin, to take photos for a new illustration.Here's a view of the Capitol from Monona Terrace. It was a beautiful summer day in June, as compared to today in January when it's zero degrees and I'm inside writing about my trip. That day my sister and I had lunch on the top of the Monona Terrace overlooking the lake prior to taking a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's designed building.

Here's a model of Monona Terrace we saw on the tour. It makes a beautiful centerpiece to the Madison skyline. The trouble is it faces Lake Monona and I couldn't go out in a boat to take my own reference, so I had to rely on several online images from which to assemble my skyline.

I chose to enlarge the Capitol in the background to give it more dominance and simplified the surrounding buildings. This is my rough pencil drawing of the illustration.

I added three sailboats out in the lake and like how they activate the front with their sails.

The color palette is a lot of blues with a punch of turquoise in the windows that reflect in the water. The Capitol was very difficult to simplify because it has tons of beautiful detail. It deserves its own illustration!  After I added color, I sent it to the Monona Terrace gift shop manager, who I met that summer day, to review for accuracy. She suggested a couple changes to some buildings which I was happy to do.

Here's the final illustration of the Madison skyline in color. It is available as a card and art print in my Etsy Shop and also available for wholesale. Watch for it around Madison gift shops. I have an order going out this week already!