Edited Blog

I chose to critically evaluate my work regarding the environment brief. It represents an unexplored area for me, as I’ve been never particularly interested in creating environments. I took it as a chance to investigate what elements constitute an environment drawing and how those elements, either shapes or materials used, interact in order to depict an understandable space. For the brief, we had to draw a campus building in a futuristic setting. I decided to do a dystopian future, where the building would be a crumbling ruin. I favoured the destroyed aspect of the structure while still trying to portray it in a way that would feel out of this era. I started researching different dystopian futures, specifically, in Fallout. This videogame had a very interesting mix of futuristic and dystopian aesthetic. It was capable to convey the feeling of a future world that had been destroyed while still representing a society stuck in the 60’s. I wanted my environment to be able to explain the history of that world. The same way Fallout was capable of portraying the ruins of that society that reached atomic annihilation. For that purpose I started to think about how I wanted that dystopian future to be. At first, I settled down with a future where the construction process had been automated. Machines built everything for humans and at some point they had become wild creating a grim future where those “living cities” dominated the land. I drew a first piece to represent that universe.

I liked the idea of having these gigantic buildings that had been given life, walking around the city. Yet, my drawing seemed to fail at depicting that as a futuristic setting. It seemed that having giant buildings walking around was something more akin to fantasy rather than a futuristic setting. Nevertheless, I did not want to drop the idea of those giant structures happening in the background. I believe they emphasised the feel of that grand future that had been brought down. The structure of the campus building certainly helped portraying the futuristic aspect. I chose The Curve for that reason. It’s curved walls had that exotic out-of-the-norm feel that is particularly distinctive in our portray of the future. I produced a few drawings of the building; just to get more familiar with it’s distinguishing shapes. In fact, my earlier drawing helped me pinpoint key elements of its architecture, as I used them to create the giant’s head. Eventually, I started working on the image that would be my final piece. For my traditional media sketches I used exclusively the graphite stick. I wasn’t confident enough in my skills with other media and I enjoyed the bold thick lines in my other drawings. This is an example of such line work.

While leaving me very limited in the chromatic aspect of my pieces, the graphite still allowed me to separate different layers, background and foreground, and give the whole piece that grim look I wanted to portray. That affected my final image as well. I ended up barely colouring the grey scale so to leave that colourless reality transpire. The rendering process of the image was also a new aspect for me. I had mixed feelings about using those distinct thick lines so characteristic of my sketched images. I wanted my final piece to possess that expressive feel while still fitting into the “naturalistic” style. To that end, I worked with short but visible brush strokes to render the textures of the broken walls of the building. I applied that technique to the split section of the building to give the mass of crisscrossing metal an interesting texture. I used a common technique in digital drawing to portray the perspective of the environment. By progressively reducing the contrast in the elements in the background it would create a sense of deepness in the image. I chose a very low vantage point to emphasise the size of the building and transmit the giant scale I wanted to portray in my early drawings. For the lightning I gave everything a soft light, using stronger brush strokes with to describe the highlights on the textures of the metal walls of the building. I used softer brushes to create dust clouds and diffused points of light to create an ambience light that would bolster the atmospheric feeling, still in line with the devastation I wanted to portray. My whole process was based on trial and error, and therefore sketching was a big part of it. That is mainly the reason of my attachment to using the graphite stick in my drawings. My mark making with other media wasn’t developed enough for me to risk exploring new materials. I believe I managed to attain the objective I wanted to attain with my final drawing. That being said I feel my rendering level is still not on par with the industry standards. While being descriptive enough, and managing to make my idea for the space understandable, the final piece still misses some important elements. Colour, for example was one of my biggest concerns during this process. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t confident enough in my colouring ability to openly make use of it in my drawings. I relied too much on my line art and the graphite pencils in my traditional drawings and omitted the colour studies. I would like to work on that aspect of my drawings in the future. Regarding the creative aspect of my process, I believe I managed to produce an interesting idea, and to make it fit into the demands of the brief. As a last thought, I would point out my difficulty with coming to terms with the conflict between a stylised drawing style and the naturalistic requirements of the brief. While I will admit I sometimes use stylisation to supply the weaknesses of my drawing skill, I believe developing a personal style is important to stand out in the industry.