Grand Spectacular: How our vintage-inspired Grand Hotel travel art was built - from the ground up!

Folks often ask me how I create The Mighty Mitten's travel illustrations, and I typically say that the short answer is that I draw them on the computer.

What I should probably say instead is that I draw them on the computer, very slowly, shape by shape, layer by layer.

In the gif below, you can see each layer in the art file being revealed one-by-one, back to front (bottom to top?). The funny part is that many elements of this illustration are grouped together, so while there are thousands of distinct shapes and objects, there are actually fewer than 100 layers in the file. If every little hand-drawn flower or spot on a butterfly wing were on its own layer this animation would take a lot longer to play!

The Grand Hotel print made for a particularly fun piece of art to try this with. So many columns and windows and flags!