AtomHawk 2020: The Adventure begins!!

"I wanted to relate how adventure could relate to my family and loved ones. And nothing makes me happier then the adventure my dog has been on, we adopted him from a dog shelter and since then he gets weekly trips out to the Yorkshire dales, beaches, and other cool places! I want to design and illustrate him going on the first step of that adventure and leaving the shelter. This is fun because it gives me a chance to design a dog shelter! I will post other designs related to the challenge soon.Sometimes the best adventures aren't the super epic ones but the small things we do from day to day, the people we meet and the odd things that interrupt our daily routine."

Wow!! This was a brain ache and a half!! I think by doing this challenge I realise that I have SO many fundamentals to brush up upon! But that's the beauty of learning. 

 I realise that for many many years I drew references face for face value but now I am learning how to use certain part of references and implementing them into my illustration. The colours on this changed a lot over the time because I was really struggling. I did some studies to try and help myself out. I really tried and push the values in this piece but it makes it look a little like live theatre. 

Here Are my building studies that helped me with my colour on this piece. Both of these I took from reference that I took myself. I find taking the reference myself really helps since I can imagine what I saw from memory and can imagine it in more of a 3D space. I wanted to push the colours both on these while keeping it still looking a little realistic. I really like the work of Dice Tsutsumi, Craig mullens, Nathan Fowkes, since they all have really beautiful ways of expressing colours. I really love how you can control the whole mood and feeling of a piece by how you colour it and what values you can use. 

I wanted to really show off the line art for this piece. Line art is something I have really been focusing on since the beginning of this year. Not only am I thinking of lines but its the structure that's underneath. I know I leave A LOT to be desired on when it comes to perspective, however I want to show my knowledge through my lines and line weight. I spent most of the time in this painting trying to get this line work as polished as I can get it. And for the first time I tried to really stick to the line art (I changed the figure in front very drastically. However I really felt like I needed to change it since it looks a little weird.) I tried to use the tree around the door to lead your eyes around the girls and the dog and push your eye towards the man. 

Here Is the concept design for the building. My inspiration was the kinds of buildings I pass in Yorkshire and in the countryside with a little bit of modernness to it. I want it to look welcoming and a place where you'd WANT to adopt a dog from. I tried to add plants and a weather vane so the place looks like it really is in the countryside and taking the advantage of the surroundings, I wanted to add a cobblestone building as well (where the dogs live) to give it a really country feeling. I was going to add cobblestone walls around the building but I knew they wouldn't make it into the final illustration. 

Here are my thumbnails for the building.The first image are the experimentation and the second one is the exploration of the choice and problem solving on how the building looks from different angles to problem solve whatever angle I draw it in. Out of the thumbnails I felt like the top right one was the most fitting for the thing I was going for in my mind, it looks sturdy, strong and safe and well balanced. Where as the others look a little wacky and don't really give off a farm vibe. I changed a few things in the "turn around"" (very messy I know but this is for my own personal use.. )so it could make sense in my own mind. I liked the ideas of adding circular windows in the middle of the building as it does have an attic first of all but second of all i think it added a little balance. 

Here are the ""Character designs"" (I use that term extremely loosely as the more I progress with my journey the more I realise I am not so good at characters). Something I really wanted to implement though was different kind of body types since I only really see very similar body types in art and around the time I was drawing this my boyfriend used me for reference for one of his pieces and kept my proportions. And every draw over he got made my body proportions a lot thinner then I am. so I wanted to add a little chub to these gals. 

for the outfits I wanted something thats friendly and the outfits are based off of people I see walking dogs. I wanted to imply that these two girls are together so try and make them compliment each other. So after I picked the outfits I wanted to just give them something small to make them look more as a couple. 

Right! I think that's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed this journey with me.