MATS Bootcamp 3 – Global Art Gathering Poster

I am postponing my blogpost about the last week of MATS B … today we are in Bootcamp!
The April assignment was to do a poster for the MATS Global Art Gathering that will take place in Brighton in June. To explain what it's all about I am quoting from the MATS website: "The Global Art Gathering will bring together leading experts from the art industry with artists from all over the world, to explore how to build a flourishing art/design career by making great art that is commercially viable."
You can see the whole gallery of fabulous posters done by the bootcampers here!
And here's my poster:

I loved working on it! Here are a few work in progress pics:

As the briefing asked for a handlettered headline I started with some lettering experiments, and some (a lot of!) scribbled pages later I decided to go for brush lettering as seen above.
I knew I wanted to go for a conceptual poster and wanted to concentrate on what an art conference really is about: sharing knowledge and making connections. It took me a bit to get the right idea for the illustrations. After brainstorming I had a lot of ideas and did a lot of sketches, but didn't like them really … till I had that idea:

I am calling these "Knowlegde Swirl" and "Knowledge Net" :-)

Painting my icons with watercolour …
Then I collaged it all together in Photoshop. Finally I added some line drawings for showing the venue (the Brighton Dome) and adding a bit of a seaside athmosphere. I like these little details:

Lilla Rogers and the MATS team will now pick one poster that will actually be used for the event. There's almost 300 fab posters in the gallery – I guess they will have a pretty hard time with their selection!