BACKGROUND IMAGES: PROGRESS

I have been working on a new illustration for the UT Life and Letters magazine article. Since it has not been published yet I am only going to show a progression of how I developed the background for the illustration. They wanted photo collage but I simplified it into solid colors of shape because the content that will added is very busy visually. The last image has messy aspects to it but those are areas that are not shown in the final published image.