ballet with christine: website illustration

illustration based on a photo. photographer: luis alberto rodriguez. dancer: ava sautter, corps de ballet, new york city ballet.

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this is a homepage illustration I did for of a dear friend’s ballet website (link coming soon) which I worked on earlier this year with my partner for tinynest, our minimalist web design studio/practice.

my friend Christine is a ballet teacher and ex-professional ballet dancer.

for her site, she asked me to draw an illustration of a dancer — an image which evoked and suggested a contemplative, dreamy, rich, internal world — rather than the acrobatic, showy ballet displays you typically see. we went back and forth on ideas, and finally she found this photo, by the photographer Luis Alberto Rodriguez, which I used as a reference for this drawing.

I drew it in bed, at night, while listening to The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. it was a contemplative and beautiful process. I’m not sure yet if we’ll animate it, with the light changing or leaves falling, or keep it as a still.