This Vancouver Artist Is Chronicling the City for 30 Straight Days

What’s your favourite Vancouver icon?

That question has an almost endless amount of answers, from Science World to the East Van sign to… (sighs heavily) the Barge. But there’s a good chance that, whatever it is, Vancouver artist Sam Parker has portrayed it in his current series.

The Emily Carr grad is currently working on a project in which he’s creating images of Vancouver for 30 days in a row on his Instagram. “Just started as a daily challenge,” says Parker, who plans on doing some sort of post every day for a year. “I might turn some into posters and maybe start bringing them to the East Van market.”

Parker has taken on both images that are synonymous with Vancouver we know now, like the Lions at the foot of the Lions Gate Bridge and Dude Chilling Park, as well as those that are gone but not forgotten, like the Jimi Hendrix Shrine and the Moon Glow Cabaret.

To create the images, Parker uses Procreate on his iPad and either references the image from the web or pictures he’s taken. Then, he blasts it with textures in Photoshop and adds a James Coffman typeface. “I wanted to simplify and flatten everything,” he says. “It’s somewhat Wes Anderson-inspired.”

Asked for his personal favourite, he says “the atmospheric river or the canyon lights. I feel like those do a decent job of creating mood.”