Sketching in Chapelfield Gardens

Today as part of life drawing I went to chapelfield to create some pencil sketch studies of the natural things in the park such as trees and plants.

First I did some quick studies of the trees around the park.


After finishing the studies I created an original composition based on something in the park, I chose a building in the center of the park that I immediately felt could be adapted to my concept.

I increased the scale in the style of the towers in my game so far and changed the aesthetic to fit.

I added tiers of living space in the style of the previous drawings, with small harder to access rooms at the 'roof' and a more luxury sheltered group of buildings underneath, the idea was that it would have been build onto an old human building but that was kind of lost, the platform is kind of just generic now.

I added some tone in photoshop but didn't shade at all this time around, I made a conscious effort to add realistic shading in the pencil sketch so I decided to let that speak for itself and simply add tone to separate the foreground and the background. I also added some very small modifications such as the support ropes* which I made more obvious and changed the positions to make them more even and aid in the composition. I also added a sepia tone using the 'colour balance' menu red gradient just for style, then added red to the banners to accentuate them (although I haven't gone over the top I felt that decoration would be important in the design of the tower..

*support ropes are there mostly for aesthetic purposes and for balance, but could be used by the bonobos as access.

I'm very happy with the development of this sketch, I felt like the overall shapes of the towers so far have been very blocky rectangular and uninspired, it actually looks interesting and unique now.