REFLECTIVE STATEMENT

REFLECTIVE STATEMENT - INVISIBLE CITIES 

Our invisible cities project has now finished. Throughout this project I have learned how to  visualise and produce concept art to a good standard. Producing thumbnail drawings was something which I never would have experimented with before or thought would be a useful technique when drawing. However, this project has allowed me to understand the true importance and benefit of producing sketches and thumbnails. I find it hard to produce work quickly as I prefer to spend more time on detail and realism, but doing the thumbnails allowed me to come out of my comfort and experiment more, especially with the speed in which I would create the work. 

I am happy with my three final concept drawings as I feel like they represent the city well. I am also proud that I was able to maintain the same colour theme throughout all the drawings, and they all look connected. Although, I did spend a lot of time especially on the interior shot, I feel like I captured the detail well and got the perspective accurate. The same goes for the low angle exterior shot, as I wanted to challenge myself with the perspective, so I spent a long time sketching and planning the drawing to ensure it would be accurate. The establishing shot I feel was my least favourite, as it didn't feature as much detail as I would have liked, and the perspective was pretty simple. I decided to add some  star constellations which would represent the blueprints for the city, but they were not as visible and readable as what I originally wanted, but rather looked like faint random white lines. 

After receiving advice for my interior shot, I decided to add a strong light source into the drawing. I chose red as it would contrast the rest of the lighting and it would also liven up the mood of the drawing. I payed a lot of attention of the reflections and how each material would absorb the lighting, so it was as accurate as possible. Just by adding this one light source changed the entire drawing and give it more character. I feel like the two other drawings would have benefitted from a light source similar to one in the interior, to make the buildings glow and have more contrast in lighting. The lights which I added to the cranes didn't produce enough lighting, but rather drew more attention to the cranes.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and have learnt so much on digital drawing. Not only how to use brushes effectively, but to also plan and visualise drawings. In future projects I will aim to focus heavily on the lighting of each drawing, and design more complex shots. As I focused on realism for this project, I could also maybe experiment with a more expressive style or cartoon style. I thought I handled my time management well, but in the future I need to get into the habit of posting my work on the day it's produced to prevent the work from stacking up.