Blog seems to be messing up a little. Sorry if it looks confusing.

New Background is Coming Closer

New Background is Coming Closer

I've discovered the lasso tool! It's coming along alright.

New Background is Coming

Working on a new background for my blog. Wanted to do something myself. It's a work in progress right now but will be finished soon.

Diomira Thumbnails

Diomira is a city made up from sixty silver domes and bronze statues of the Gods. So for my first sketch I covered a landscape in domes and angel statues, but I think that it's too simple. From the short description in the book I got the impression that the natives of Diomira are highly religious because of the statues. In some ancient societies it was believed that the Gods were connected to the sky or the stars. So in my concept work I came up with the idea that the domes in the city are to represent the planets and stars in the sky, and they are floating in air in the hope that the city of Diomira may join the Gods in the sky, that they will become at one with the creators and rulers that watch over them. Sketch number five is my favourite and I'll move on with this concept.

Baucis Thumbnails

Baucis is a city suspended in the sky on stilts. For creating the thumbnails for this city I focused a lot with the background and making clouds. I experimented with different brushes to create different textures. When drawing the buildings I imagined heavy wooden or metal structures balanced on thin stilts. I like the look that the city could fall at the slightest breeze.

Mess on Maya

I'm new to Maya so this is what I had done in an hour. Just proving that I am using Maya and learning (slowly) so may need more help. I feel that sometimes everyone else is ahead of me really quickly and I'm always stuck on the most simple part of the lesson. It's easy for me to get lost in Maya.

Argia Sketch

It may not look like much but I just wanted to get the effect of lights in the dark. I aimed to get the same effect from cities at night. The structures of the buildings are not clearly visible in the low light, but only the lights give a vague picture to what they look like. In the background I had drawn an ordinary village on a hill. I came up with a story where a small village above ground fell through the Earth in a natural disaster. The survivors decided to settle and build the small village into a massive underground city. I'm quite happy with how this turned out though it can be a lot better. I found that listening to music helped me draw constantly without stopping, and I listened to the same song over and over again because I thought the style of music went really well with the theme of the picture. I listened to Dye Fantasy, which has a horribly disturbing animated video, but the song pretty good to work to. 

Argia Thumbnails

Argia is an underground city submerged in soil and dirt, which made it easy to decide on the colour scheme. When doing thumbnails I am really starting to pick up an abstract style. Working like this gives me a broad base to create my sketches on.

Study of Architecture

 After struggling with drawing the buildings of Anastasia, I decided to research architecture to find a style to base my concept art on. I decided to do this because I remember when reading 'The Art Of Frozen,' the concept artists based the architecture on Norwegian buildings. They followed a particular style to achieve the look of the film. When I imagined Anastasia it was clean and brightly colourful with decorative buildings and statues, and I instantly thought of Moscow. 

 In 'Game Of Thrones' some of the cities had large extravagant statues in them. It's a symbolism of power and might, the statues stand as tall as God and look down on the world beneath them.


When I did my first digital sketch of Anastasia I thought of this and drew in several gold statues, with a main one that stood over a palace. Since Anastasia is said to have women roaming around seducing men, I made the statues to be beautiful women made of gold.

 Canterbury Cathedral

 Sheerness

Fantasy city based on table lamp

Anastasia First Sketch

I'm not very happy with this sketch of Anastasia, but I realized from doing this is that I really need to focus on the architecture of the city. I have a clear image in my head of what I feel this city should look and today I couldn't draw it the way I wanted to. I'll practice on paper first and go from there.

Anastasia Thumbnails

Anastasia is a city that contains dark addictive desires. It's rich with precious stones, women and food. It makes those who love it become its slave. Temptation is at the heart of this town, and draws people into its trap. I really like the sound of this one. In the book, Anastasia has a strong trade in Onyx, Chrysoprase and Chalcedony, which are coloured stones. So when drawing the thumbnails I used a colour palette based on these stones. 

Invisible Cities- Rough Sketches

First three- Octavia/ Last one- Esmeralda

 Octavia is described as a city tangled in ropes and bridges in a spider web style. It sounds chaotic and messy and reminds my of a child's bedroom. This is Octavia as a fantasy town dreamt up by a child, who has recreated it in their room.

More Summer Project (Posted Late)

The drawings I did over summer inspired some final images. This is some kind of security camera, with an eye ball for a lens. I thought that by using and eye ball instead of a lens gave the camera a creepy look, and asks the question as to whether this robotic machine has an independent mind. 

The light bulb makes up the main body of the robot in this sketch. And the animal isn't the main idea, it's the machine like goggles he's wearing. I was watching Narnia at the time so I started drawings animals and it merged into my sketches.

An old camera is where this idea comes from. This is a house that is designed to compress and fold itself down to the ground to escape the harsh conditions of a desert storm.

Glow gobbler! It's a plant life form that grows hanging onto tree branches and forms into a bulb with a face. It opens its mouth to release a toxin in the air that attracts fire flies. Once it has eaten one, it can start to glow, and the more fire flies it consumes, the brighter it will glow. The bulb grows bigger and bigger and some have grown so large that the tree it lives on snaps from the pressure.

From the old camera I came up with the idea to create an Asian dragon. Dragons from Chinese and Japanese culture are long serpent like creatures that glide through the sky. This effectively is a robot one. I really love dragons so that's why I did this. To be honest I haven't got much of a back story for this one but I could come up with one. 

Based on the blade of a pair of scissors, this is a monster that resembles a pokemon. When I was a child I watched an old black and white movie that had a tall dark beast which rose from a swamp. Well that's how I remember it. The real film might be nothing like that but I never got the image out of my head.

First Esmeralda Sketch

Esmeralda is described as a city submerged in water. There are no streets, just rivers, and the only way to travel from place to place is by boat. At first I thought of Venice, and imagined a beautiful town with pretty buildings. That was my original idea, but then I looked at the abandoned submarine stranded in the river in Rochester. It reminds me of war and disaster. I then envisioned a world with only the necessities to survive. This Esmeralda is a desolate land in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster. The sketch itself is not well developed, because I mainly experimented with two different kinds of brushes. I used bold squares and triangles to build this disaster world, and I feel that this has made it better. This version of Esmeralda has no pretty details on beautiful architecture, no statures or artwork of any kind. Personally I hate this Esmeralda, but I might go more into detail with the back story of this picture.      

Esmeralda Thumbnails

Esmeralda is described as a city of water by Calvino. To create thumbnails I tried using an abstract style to help me with ideas for possible concept art. I found that using a spray brush in a light colour gave the effect of city lights in the distance. This gave a lot of my abstract images a city form. Also I chose a colour palette that consisted of blues and greens. I felt if I just used blue it would restrict the atmospheric emotion and cause the images to look very similar.

Octavia Sketch 2

Octavia is a city that resembles a spider's web. They are known to be found in small dark spaces, so I attempted to recreate that effect by placing the city in a narrow space between two cliffs.

Octavia Thumbnails

I didn't draw my first sketch of Octavia off the top of my head. I got it from thumbnail number one. I set purple for the overall colour of Octavia, as it's described as a spider's web. Spiders remind me of gothic style, and I find that the symbol of a spider marks poison, which is commonly purple in tone.

My First Attempt Painting with Photoshop

Looked alright until I drew an ugly moon base in the middle. Like a scotch egg stranded in Star Wars. I had the most fun recreating stars in the galactic sky. In A- level photography I studied space photography, and pictures taken from satellites inspired my work.

First sketch of Octavia

Octavia is a fantasy city created by Italo Calvino, a town suspended in webs and bridges. It resembles the nest of a giant spider, which is why I sneaked a spider in the sketch. I don't write very well, but I'm pleased with this drawing as it's only my second time painting on photoshop.

Summer Project

I've been given a challenge to do over the summer. I was given a collection of images (some I couldn't work out what they were,) and draw 101 concept drawings/ sketches that come from them based on the themes life forms, structures and machines.