Visual Language: 7th - 13th November 2016

This week I made a start on my environmental drawings. Originally, me and a few others were planning to drive to brimham rocks and draw them since they are very interesting and unusual things. We never got around to going and then also it would simply be just too cold to keep going. After that I was struggling with where to go and where to draw. I had considered drawing the interior of the pub that I work in but I would have felt far too uncomfortable doing that. 

For my research into backgrounds and interesting compositions, I started looking at Treasure Planet. I have always loved this film and it's use of 3D backgrounds with 2D characters. Since they modeled backgrounds in 3D, it allowed them the freedom and flexibility to play around with compositions a bit more, but also to achieve some more interesting and impressive shots even with complex elements within. The style creates a contrast against the linework of the characters which I think is quite appealing. The 3D elements do almost look too smooth because they don't have the slightly choppy and personal feel of the hand-drawn 2D elements.

I eventually decided that, since I commute to and from uni every day, that I could just draw the interior of the train and the train stations. While I did still feel quite uncomfortable drawing with so many people around, at least I didn't know them, so that made it better. 

I made an effort to try and draw 1 drawing per journey home (30 minutes), so it gave me a time limit and stopped me from adding too much detail and instead, focusing on the shapes and composition. I also did a few while waiting at the platforms. I also sat down at the pub in the train station and drew the view of the ticket gates. As I was focusing on the environment, I had to draw what I could see when I could see it since there were so many people blocking my view. When drawing certain areas, I had to wait for a glimpse through the crowds to see what was behind. Because of this, it may be somewhat inaccurate in proportions but believe that I succeeded in making it recognisable in what it is. 

I did this same thing with the train itself. I didn't want to draw the people sat in the chairs so I used the empty chairs as a reference to draw the ones that were obscured from view. Doing these environment drawings hasn't been as bad I was expecting it to be. I get very uncomfortable drawing when people are around but I think that having actually done it, I found it easier to stop worrying about the people around me and just focus on the drawing itself.