Art of

Ersilla
INVISIBLE CITIES PROJECT BY GRACE SANSBURY CHANCE
The Project

For our first project this year, we were asked

to create 3 concepts arts based on different
made up descriptions of cities in the book,
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, released in
1972. It descripted 55 different cities but for
this project we had to chose from 14 cities.
After creating thumbnails for all 4 cities, I
decided to go with the city, Ersilla, a trading
city as it caught my interest the most.
 In Ersilla, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's
life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the
houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white
according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of
trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so
numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the
inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the
strings and their supports remain.
From a mountainside, camping with their household goods,
Ersilla's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and
poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and

Extract
they are nothing.
They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern
of strings which they would like to be more complex and at
the same time more regular than the other. Then they
abandon it and take themselves and their houses still
farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilla, you come

upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which
do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind
rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a
form.
 Influences and
Brainstorm
My main idea while doing my thumbnails was
comparing the city to the Native Americans
and Travelers, as the city is always on the move
as the strings connecting the city together
become too many and they move on and that
it is a trading city, as I can imagine the city
moving to new places to trade.
These images These were the main pictures that
helped influence my concept art for the
establishing shot, in the city exterior and interior.
Early
Thumbnails
Early
Thumbnails
Final Thumbnails
Color
Palette
Final Paintings and Sketches
Interior
Exterior Establishing Shot
Low Angle Shot