Chennai Watercolor Travel Poster

Goal: Create a vertical travel poster illustration celebrating Chennai with the subtitle Everyday Urban Rhythm, blending urban street life, coastal air, and South Indian temple architecture.

Canvas: Portrait poster, 4:5 aspect ratio, off-white watercolor paper background with lots of negative space in the upper left. Fine ink linework with soft transparent watercolor washes in warm beige, ochre, dusty green, muted blue-gray, black, and sepia.

Layout: Large title text at the upper left reading “Chennai” in elegant high-contrast serif type. Directly below it, handwritten script subtitle reading “Everyday Urban Rhythm.” Under the subtitle place a short divider line and a small typewriter-style poem: “Salt in the air. / Filter coffee in hand. / Stories in every street. / This is Chennai.” Add another short divider below the poem. At the bottom left add a tiny handwritten note: “Chennai / is not just / a city, / it’s a feeling.”

Main scene: A lively Chennai street receding into the distance along the seafront. On the right, a detailed ornate Dravidian temple gopuram rises behind old street buildings, covered with many tiny sculpted figures and pastel accents. A large leafy tree frames the upper right. In the far left background, show a red-and-white striped lighthouse near the sea promenade. The road and pavement should feel sunlit, dusty, and slightly wet with loose watercolor textures.

Street elements and exact counts: Include 3 auto rickshaws: one prominent yellow-black auto rickshaw in the lower left foreground driving away, one smaller yellow-black auto behind it, and one tiny distant auto near the promenade. Include 3 curved black street lamps along the road, decreasing in size with perspective. Include 4 visible birds in the pale sky. Include 1 bicycle cart in the center foreground loaded with green coconuts, ridden by a man. Include 1 separate coconut pile or cart on the lower right near the sidewalk. Include 1 filter coffee stall on the right foreground with a vendor, metal tumblers, a chalkboard menu, hanging bulbs, and a wooden counter labeled “FILTER COFFEE” and “STRONG & DEGREES.” Include 4 major signboards: a green bilingual Marina Beach direction sign in the midground, a large Tamil sign above the right-side building, a shop sign in Tamil above the coffee stall, and a dark menu chalkboard beside the stall.

People: Show a small crowd dispersed along the street and promenade, drawn loosely but recognizably. In the foreground include a woman in a cream saree with gold accents walking away on the right, a male coconut seller riding the bicycle cart in the center, and a coffee stall vendor in a pale shirt behind the counter.

Text handling: Keep the English title, subtitle, poem, bottom note, and coffee-stall lettering legible. Use Tamil-style lettering on the signboards where visible, but it may be painterly and imperfect. Set the customizable beach sign text as MARINA BEACH. Set the customizable coffee stall label as FILTER COFFEE.

Visual style: Sophisticated architectural travel sketch, ink-and-watercolor wash, airy editorial poster design, realistic perspective but loose handmade edges, detailed temple and street foreground, minimal sky, no photo-realism, no digital gloss, no watermark.