For my third and final image, I wanted to take a more traditional approach, and really latch on to my feedback to create a separation between my reference and the painting. I knew from my earlier sketchbook work that I wanted this scene to be some kind of market scene. In my head, I was drawing inspiration from my time in the middle east, as well as a holiday visit to Andalucia in Spain, which is a location which has also evolved to adapt to rising temperatures. I created a mood board to explore these ideas more:
Next, I went back to my sketchbook to explore some thumbnail compositions. I didn't end up finishing this set, as one of the options gave me a strong starting point that I wanted to explore further.
I realised, however, that taking a bottom-up view would make the perspective of this image really tricky. If I had my Blender skills up to speed, I probably could create a rough mockup of the scene to explore compositions and lighting. Well, that wasn't an option yet. That's when I remembered that one of my digital drawing programs, Clip Studio Paint, had started to incorporate 3D models. Basic objects are included as well as models for average human mannequins. The community also has a space to share models that they have created. I was able to find a model of a basic street scene.
With time and experimentation, I worked out how to not only import these models but to then adjust and rearrange them. I modified the street scene, changing the height, layout and moving the buildings closer to each other, and narrowing the street itself, similar to the ones I had experienced in Spain. I was also able to create a realistic pose of a child sitting on an adult's shoulders. As I moved the camera around to get the right shot, I realised that the eye would be drawn up.
What could I place there? I wasn't sure yet, but I did want to try and create a natural way to focus the attention of the viewer, so I changed the pose so the child was looking and pointing up to whatever this fantastical thing was. I was also able roughly to adjust lighting which also gave me a basic lighting reference moving forward. This is what I saved as my reference:
I then decided that the focus would be a monorail, as a way to represent something fast (and thinking back to those videos of train journeys in a past exercise!). Using this model as a base reference, I sketched on top of it directly, adding in other details to flesh out the scene:
This essentially gave me containers to guide my drawing further. I imported this image into Rebelle and then set about creating a sketch over the top of it, leaving the 3D model behind.
Having created an additional layer of separation, I then moved to the painting part. I think if I was doing a larger piece I would like to have done more sketches and additional work like colour studies. This would have avoided the struggle I got into early on in the painting process, where I was not sure about my colour choice. I paused the painting at this stage and did research into gamut masking. I then applied this knowledge in choosing the following gamut for the painting:
Here is the video I created to demonstrate the stages I went through to create the painting:
And here is the final painting:
I am not really happy with the adult, but I am pretty happy with the child. Again, I found it really hard to be loose with my work here. I think this is because I had chosen a subject with both tricky perspectives and lighting. In those respects, I am pleased with what I created. I wasn't sure how to manage the dappled light from the trees, but I think the overall effect is ok. The overall effect is quite illustrative, and I wonder how to make this image freer. I did well to reduce the detail in the distance and went back to blur the monorail train and some of the edges at the periphery. I think though that I could have taken this further.
I like this image and think I can add more to it, especially thinking about the detail that will make this image come alive like signs, other people and props. But I now have time to address that before the next assessment. I don't think this really holds up to a professional piece of concept art, but I think it does hold up to the brief and what I wanted to depict.
The final aspect of the assignment is a final reflective statement, which I will create in the following post, once my tutor has given his feedback. In short, though, I think I have managed to navigate this assignment in a way that is authentic to me. I didn't see as much of Spindrift show up as I would have liked. I think that's a symptom of the things that are going on in my personal life at the moment.
I still get a sense that I am looking to be something that perhaps I am, perhaps, just not. What I do have a better appreciation of after all these months of struggle and personal stress is that despite what is going on around me, I have developed my ability to appreciate and enjoy The journey. The fact is that with every new bit of work I create (big or small), I take one step closer to finding a truer sense of who I am right now. And somehow, I take comfort in knowing that once I get close to who that is, the goalposts will shift again and I get to continue my adventure to the next version of me.
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