Illustrating a map with many small icons

This is another recent project I was working on. It was done together with the team at Singapore Press Holdings. I only worked on creating the illustration icons. The area around the Singapore Zoo now has so many other attractions. The whole area is now called the Mandai Wildlife Reserve. I wished I had more time to go explore these places before I had to draw them, as a research and reference collecting trip. That would have been fun! But I didn't have the time so I had to work with reference photos already available online. 

Each location had to be distilled to a small picture icon. And that was the challenging part. Here you see the completed version, and it may look simple. But most of the time was spent on the concept sketches, to nail that angle, that position, and showing just the essentials to represent each place. 

I usually think up multiple variations of the same location as options, and then choose the best one. Then there are amendments. All this can take days or weeks, depending on how rushed the deadline is, but that's part of the work. The part where the work is in sketch stage is the most important and also most time consuming. Nothing gets colored or vectorized until the sketches are approved. And then after that, the coloring/vectorizing can proceed smoothly without much adjustments.

Used with permission by Singapore Press Holdings.

Here is the artwork printed on the newspaper. Although it looks duller because it is on newsprint, I enjoy looking at the dot textures! Can you spot me in the illustrations?