Puerto Rico Travel Posters: Making Of

A new series always starts with one image that will not leave me alone. For the PR Travel Posters project, that image was a map folded so many times it had a personality of its own—pale mint paper, a dark green island, the name written by hand like a signature. From that single drawing the group grew into folded maps, rainforest faces, and one very loud beak. This is how the Puerto Rico travel posters move from research to final art.

Why the map keeps folding

The first pieces in the project are built around the same object: a tourist map opened and refolded until the creases become part of the design. In A Map Folded to Puerto Rico, the sheet stands in three accordion panels, the island printed in olive green with two smaller islands set off to one side, and the words “Puerto Rico” lettered underneath in a looping brown script about the size of a signature. I wanted the map to feel like something pulled out of a backpack, not something pinned in a classroom.

Folded Map, Gray Visitor pushes that idea further. The paper still opens in accordion pleats, pale mint with the same darker green island shape, but now a gray sea creature has hooked its snout over the top edge, eyes just clearing the paper, with a small red heart floating nearby. The lettering in the corner is loose and slightly uphill, the way you write on something you are about to fold again.

Reading Over Your Shoulder pulls the composition even tighter: the sheet reads as three-dimensional zigzag panels while everything else stays flat, the island a single muted green shape with three smaller ones trailing east, and a watcher creeping in from the top edge. The map becomes the stage, and the animal becomes the tourist.

Research for these is less about geographic accuracy and more about the behavior of paper. I study how real maps crack at the folds, where the ink wears thin, and how a fold can turn a flat sheet into a set of small rooms. Those observations live in the full portfolio alongside the finished pieces.

Puerto Rico travel posters built from one color clue

Each piece in the series is anchored by one dominant color relationship. A Face in the Canopy keeps the monkey almost hidden in warm grey against pale green, surrounded by ruled lines in the sky, drifting circles, and leaves stacked until the depth collapses. The face turns out of the thicket and holds still, while fronds cross its shoulders and a broad leaf clips its ear.

All Bill, No Apology does the opposite: the toucan’s beak takes up nearly a third of the circle in orange and yellow, tipped in black, angled down like something too heavy to hold level. Behind the compact black body and white bib, a red disc sits low like a sun near the end of the day.

Before I touch the final surface, I make small color keys—usually three or four thumbnail versions of the same composition with different temperature shifts. I keep the ones that feel true to the island’s light: warm wall paint, wet green shade, late sun on concrete. I post clips of those decisions on YouTube as the work moves along.

When the animal hijacks the frame

The wildlife pieces in this series are designed to ambush the viewer. In A Face in the Canopy, the monkey is buried at the center and then hidden again, so the first read is pattern and the second read is a pair of eyes. In All Bill, No Apology, the bird is compressed behind its own beak; the shape is ridiculous, but the grip on the branch and the blue eye ringed in pale skin keep it grounded.

I crop tight on purpose. A travel poster has to read from across a room, but it also has to reward someone standing close. Letting an animal push past the edge of the paper—or in the case of the map pieces, past the fold—gives the series its own logic: the wildlife does not stay inside the border any more than a tourist stays inside the itinerary.

From paper studies to a wall you can stand inside

The series did not stay on paper. Iguana Wing, Flag Wing translates the poster language into a mural: two feathered forms rise from a yellow stucco field and meet in a shallow V at the bottom, set at a height where a person standing between them wears the wings. The left wing carries a green iguana painted head-down along the leading edge, its crest raised and its banded tail trailing far below the feathers. The right wing carries the flag of Puerto Rico, its stripes and star folded into the feathers.

That scale shift changes every decision. What reads as a crisp line on a sheet becomes a stroke you make with your whole arm. I draw the wings at full size in fragments, project the key lines onto the wall, block in the flat color first, then return with a smaller brush for the tight details like the iguana’s eye and the flag’s edges. You can see more finished walls in the mural section.

What “finished” actually means in the studio

When the original illustration is complete, the work is not done. I scan the piece at high resolution and compare the screen version to the original under daylight, adjusting only dust, stray graphite, and the slight color shift that scanning always introduces. I then make a small physical proof and leave it on the studio wall for a week, catching anything my eyes missed while I was too close to the paint.

The originals and any available prints live in the shop. For questions about framing, shipping, or how an edition is numbered, the FAQ covers the practical side.

Following the series

The PR Travel Posters project is still growing. New pieces start the same way: a folded map, a color note, or an animal that refuses to stay in the background. If you want to see the next stage, the process videos are on YouTube, and if you are considering a mural or a commissioned travel-inspired piece, you can get in touch here.