Medieval Town - video courses

Recently I finished preparing a Skillshare course about designing fantasyarchitecture. I presented there many architectonic details drawn from imagination, talked about the rules accompanying medieval builders and highlighted many frequently made mistakes in designing fantasy architecture. An important part of the course are “case studies” - four detailed illustrations summarizing four chapters of the course.

I explained there a designing process based, among others, on historical and constructional aspects. In this blog post, I’ll shortly present how they were drawn step by step. Today it’s time for a little, medieval town square.    

1.      If you don’t know, what is presented here, I don’t blame you. Luckily for me, shortly after that (i.e. before I forgot what I was thinking about) I began to draw a full-size, neat sketch.

2.      If you don’t know what to draw, just start with a horizon line placed in 1/3 or 2/3 of the height of the frame. Drawing vertical lines in 1/3 and2/3 of the width of the frame should be also helpful in setting the composition. I added also a few other divisions. Easy stuff so far 😊

3.      Probably now you can see, that there will be two fragments of buildings on the foreground (on the right and the left) and some houses with a bridge/gate in the background. Medieval towns quite often had irregularly shaped roads and “squares”. That’s why there are two different vanishing points for these two foreground buildings, as they are not meant to be parallel. It’s also time to decide how high the floors should be.

4.      Defining actual shapes of the buildings. Do you see the striking similarities with the first concept sketch?

5.      Marking the most important details, which should give some character to the scene.

6.      Further delving into the details…

7.      Erasing pencil lines and leaving only the fine, ink drawing.

8.      Seems like a big step forward in comparison with the previous one, but this part in fact required relatively little thinking and lots of arduous work. The one important aspect here was a decision about the light direction.

The next post will be dedicated to the third “case study” from the course - “Swamp Fortress” (I hope that the title is a bit intriguing).

In the meantime, you can take a look at how this medieval town square was colored with watercolors in sepia tones!

Watercolors - Beginnings

"But what am I going to see?
I don't know. In a certain sense, it depends on you.” 

S. LEM "Solaris" 

Today's story will concern my beginnings in struggling with watercolors. Maybe it doesn't sound too interesting. What's even worse, maybe it really isn't too interesting. Nevertheless this story should be uplifting for those who are doubting in their ability of mastering this technique.

I admit that some people just have a sense for watercolors. They know intuitively in which proportions the paint should be diluted to create both delicate and precise work. They can avoid unwanted smudges and "moldy" patterns. Well, I'm not one of them. 
While struggling with watercolors I felt a mix of frustration and desperation fueled by low self-esteem. However I had to  mobilize myself just enough to be able to pass an entrance exam for the Faculty of Architecture and then cope with art classes during studies. I just had to find the way to conquer watercolors before they defeat me.

STAGE 1. First (and second, and third) attempts with watercolors were a series of defeats and setbacks. Paint flew in all possible directions (especially in those directions it shouldn't). Alternatively it was so dense and sticky that it was losing its transparent properties and just couldn't be smeared. Drawing something precisely was almost impossible, not mentioning about drawing it aesthetically (I'm using the word "drawing" because despite appearances watercolor is a drawing technique).

STAGE 2. Even if a pen or pencil sketch was not a big problem for me, watercolors were destroying all my previous efforts. Apparently it's easier to have control over lines than over spots. I noticed a simple relation: the less paint on my works, the better.
Slowly and laboriously I began to learn how to control watercolors, i.e. how much water should be added depending on desired results or what the pressure of a brush should be. It's easier to focus on that while using only one color.  A very gentle application of paint didn't cover a pen drawing but only indicated the light direction and suggested dimensionality. Temporarily I resigned from striving for photorealism and the result appeared to have its charm :)

STAGE 3. But with time my  palette expanded to a staggering number of 3 and later even 5 colors. Nowadays I rarely  exceed this number because, as it's commonly known, many hues can be easily achieved  by mixing specific paints.  

STAGE 4. After a long time of arduous attempts I finally comprehended how to depict details with watercolors. The key to success is getting a very thin brush...

...and gaining a practice in using it. Sketches were needed only to set the overall composition and became quite invisible under more boldly used watercolor paint.

STAGE 5. Of course I'm still trying to develop my abilities and facing new challenges, but that's a story for a different post :)