This is the first city-by-city post in our Hand-Illustrated Stopovers series. If you haven't read the introduction yet, start there for the full backstory on the series, the migratory birds, and why we make these prints the way we do. This post is about Chicago, specifically about drawing The Bean.
The Scouting Trip
Our kids took a trip to Chicago in March 2025. We sent them with a shot list of landmarks to photograph -- The Bean, Crown Fountain, Marina City, the Riverwalk, the Art Institute -- and a set of guidelines: portrait orientation, interesting light, space at the bottom for type. They came back with hundreds of reference photos from across the city.
The Bean was always going to be the first Chicago poster in the series. It's one of those landmarks that photographs well from almost any angle, which meant we had a lot of options. The shot we selected was taken from pavement level, looking straight at the sculpture with the Millennium Park towers rising behind it. It captures exactly what makes Cloud Gate so compelling in person -- the way the Chicago skyline curves back at you from that polished surface.
From Photo to Drawing
The first step with any Stopover print is cleaning up the reference photo. The Bean is one of the most visited spots in Chicago -- getting a clear shot without dozens of people in front of it is basically impossible. I used Photoshop to remove every person from the scene, leaving just the sculpture, the plaza, and the buildings. The goal is that feeling of having the place entirely to yourself, a quiet moment with just the landmark and the city around it.
Once I had a clean reference, I moved into Procreate on the iPad to ink and paint the illustration. Here's the full drawing process compressed into about 30 seconds:
Building the Color Palette
For the Stopover series, I wanted bolder, more saturated colors than our traditional city prints. The look is more graphic, closer to screen printing than watercolor. Each print starts with a bright color I envision for the sky or foreground -- a color the rest of the print's palette will relate to. For Chicago, that was the sky blue reflected in the Bean's polished surface.
From there, I built a triadic color scheme -- three colors evenly spaced on the color wheel -- and used that as the foundation for the entire illustration. The palette started with a deep navy, a forest green, and a warm brown, with a muted lavender and sage for supporting tones. I ended up replacing the navy with the brighter blue from our Pike Place Market print. The result is an illustration that feels bold and graphic without losing the warmth of the actual scene.
This deliberate approach to color is one of the things that ties the Stopovers series together. Each city has its own palette, but I purposefully work in a few colors from the other prints' palettes for continuity. Because they share that common color DNA and the same color theory framework, the prints hang well next to each other on a gallery wall.
The Hidden Details
If you've read the series introduction, you know that every Stopover print has migratory birds hidden in the scene. Each bird represents a member of our family -- four migratory species known for the vast distances they travel. Together, this little group of travelers has its own story that we're writing as we go, print by print.
Since only two of us were on the Chicago trip, this print features two of the four birds: the Arctic Tern and the Bar-tailed Godwit. I try not to make the birds a focal point -- they're woven into the scene so they feel like they belong there. No crowds, no strangers. Just two travelers stopping through. These moments are just for us.
Adding these small characters gives each location a sense of life without filling the scene with anonymous figures. If you look closely at the plaza in front of The Bean, you'll find them. Once you know the birds are in every print, it becomes a bit of a game -- spotting where they've landed in each new city.
Setting Up the Print
Once the illustration is finished, I set up the layouts for two sizes: 8x10 and 11x14 inches. There's generous breathing room around the edges -- I want these to feel like prints, not posters crammed to the margin. I hand-write the landmark description and my signature directly into the layout. These aren't individually hand-signed -- each print is a giclee reproduction, printed one at a time as orders come in, on 270 GSM FSC-certified cardstock with fade-resistant pigment inks. Made in our Fort Worth studio.
More Chicago to Come
The Bean is the first of several Chicago landmarks we'll be illustrating. The shot list they worked from included Marina City, the Riverwalk, Crown Fountain, and the Art Institute -- so there's more Chicago city art and travel wall art on the way.
If you're looking for Chicago wall art that's actually made by hand -- not stock photography or AI -- you can see the finished print and order it from the Chicago Bean product page, or browse all six cities in the Hand-Illustrated Stopovers collection.