"Magician's Palace" - Designing Imaginary Architecture

Hi there! In snowy and cold winter days like these, there’s nothing better than warm tea near the burning fireplace. As I don’t have a burning fireplace (or any other fireplace for that matter), warm tea near the computer has to suffice.

So! Here is the last of the four “case studies” but just one of the whole mass of drawings made for a course in designing imaginaryarchitecture. The concept process behind this design has been described in the course and below you can see the drawing process. This illustration is called “The Magician’s Palace” and the form of the building is strongly influenced by gothic cathedrals.

1.      Well, an expression “concept sketch” may be too generous, but this tangle of lines really helped me to capture the idea.

2.      Just a few fine, accurate lines, which will determine the size of the building on a large piece of paper.

3.      Sketches of details, which I wanted to capture as soon as possible before I forget them (I avoid using reference photos while drawing architectural objects).

Repeating the previous step in ink with “copying” repeatable elements. I’ve been using here the same waterproof Faber-Castell pens, size S. Actually, if I could find size XS, it would be even better.

4.      Further delving into details… and a moment of doubt. It’s going to take a looooong time before…

5.      …finish!

Well, it’s not the real finish yet. Below you can take a look at a short video, where I’ve been painting it with watercolors in sepia tones.

Keep warm!

Swamp Fortress

We are moving forward with exploring medieval fantasy architecture. After simple wooden huts and decaying townhouses, it’s time for a larger building - a castle in the middle of wetlands.

1.      In the case of fantasy objects, imagination is crucial, so…

Yes, that’s the fruit of my imagination. If you saw some of my previous posts, you’ve probably noticed, that thumbnail concept sketches made for my own projects are barely legible and they rarely foretell success in further works on a drawing. Let’s see what will happen this time!

2.      A really fast sketch on a large paper which will develop in a finished, detailed drawing

3.      More cautious drawing with ink

4.      Details

5.      Adding materials and shading. A few hours of adding materials and shading, actually. There is also a place for a mysterious creature from the thumbnail sketch, hurray!

This could be a finished drawing, but, in fact, I added watercolors to it. You can take a look at a short video, to see the results.

If you would like to know how to design imaginary buildings, like this one, you can watch my Skillshare course. I’m talking here about using more or less fantastical building materials, creating feasible structures, but also telling how life in various types of buildings could look like and how their function would influence their look. And of course, I couldn’t ignore my favorite subject: The Frequently Made Mistakes 😊

Miniature Buildings - p.III

Here is the third part from the serie about architectural designs for tabletop games (see also partI and partII). Now it's time for ruins and steamunk buildings.

The little pile of paper below doesn't look impressive, I know... But these are 125 pages of plans, cross sections, elevations and perspective sketches making up designs of 27 objects, which can be parts of a miniature world. 

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website http://www.printablescenery.com/.

In the next post (about something completely different) I'll try to be more wordy, I promise :)

Winterdale - miniature buildings p.II

Time for continuation of one of my previous posts and presenting new designs of tabletop miniature buildings. A fantasy land "Winterdale" is expanding more and more!

It's really nice to know, that my buildings are "real" somehow. Well, they can be touched, they form an environment... for a group of miniature figures. Sounds awesome to me :) 

Here are few sketches of miniature buildings in medieval style (a merchant's house, a cemetery chapel and some parts of a castle):

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website .

Medieval Battle

"Expanding Comfort Zone" part...next. One of the most important aspects of a good portfolio is showing an ability to draw various themes (do not confuse with variety of styles!). When browsing through my old portfolio I encountered medieval buildings, steampunk buildings, fantasy buildings and some existing buildings. In short - it was quite monothematic. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. There were also guitars. Still, it was quite far from presenting diversity of themes.

My portfolio needed more people, more animals and more dynamism (nope, torn Ghost Ship's sails  flapping on the wind don't really count as "dynamic"). How about a battle scene? It usually requires participation of a group of people, right? Dynamism is also automatically incorporated. Let's add animals in the form of horses and we will have a complete package.

1. Tadaaaa:

Not oh-so impressive, I know. Luckily it's just my 2-minutes chaotic sketch. Hopefully the final result will be a little bit better.

2. Detailed pencil drawing. The more details are drawn with an easy-to-erase pencil, the less decisions need to be made during the watercolor part:

3. The background. It's almost invisible, but I prefer to keep it very delicate at this stage. Probably after painting these fighting guys, I'll add more contrasts or details to the background. In case of watercolors adding it's always easier than withdrawing.

4. The fighting guys and their brave steeds, stage 1. Tiny little details will be added later.         

5. The fighting guys and their brave steeds, stage 2. Tiny little details were made with brown and white opaque ink. 

As suspected also the background needed further treatment to form a coherent whole with the characters. New layers of warmer colors were added to the sky, the castle and the rest of the environment.

And they lived happily ever after... 

3-POINT PERSPECTIVE - TUTORIAL

Time to continue the last post . We will take a deeper insight into constructing the line drawing of "Fantasy Castle". Below you can see (and download) an exercise in a super-fun subject: 3-point perspective + a slant horizon. Naturally we could ask a question: 

"Why bother about a perspective with 3 vanishing points if there's quite a lot of work with 2-point perspective?"

Well, it emphasizes an impression of the size of an object. In this case it will highlight that the castle was build on a rock protruding from the deep abyss.

Furthermore diagonal lines are more dynamic than  vertical, parallel ones and they give an impression of a speed (with which we could fall down into the lava for example...).

Hopefully this is useful somehow! The same tutorial (along with several other tutorials) is on the subpage "TUTORIALS" .

"Fantasy Castle"

“I know only one thing. When I sleep, I know no fear, no  trouble, no bliss. Blessing on him who invented sleep."

Stanisław Lem, "Solaris"

This is a  kind of prelude to the tutorial about 3-point perspective. I'll present here how the drawing was created step by step. Whereas principles of perspective will be explained in the next few days in a downloadable tutorial somewhere here http://grimdreamart.blogspot.com/p/tutorials.html. (At least that's the plan)

1. Setting a composition. Guiding lines were made with a pencil:

2. Aha! experience - it will be a castle. At this stage there are lots of constructional lines and I'm still not sure what shape the castle should eventually have. Using a pencil rather than a pen is much more safe right now:

3. When all what's desired is fixed with a waterproof pen (Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen is my personal favorite), we can get rid of additional interrupting lines. Well, it doesn't look excessively awesome, so...

4. Let's make some additions: windows, ornaments, dragons. It's immediately more cheerful, isn't it?

5. Time for watercolors. It's better to start with the environment before we'll go to the main subject. Apparently it's not necessary to choose warm colors for the foreground and the colder ones for the background. In some circumstances an exactly opposite approach can also work out well. Let's try it!

That's how the background looked like before it dried up. Grains of salt bravely absorb water and leave a fancy pattern:

6. These additions mentioned in the step 4...ekhmm, they're easier to draw with a pen than to paint with watercolors. I should have thought about that earlier...

7. Now it's time for textures made with a thin brush and dense paint. What's even more important I had to work further on overall color settings and  unify the whole painting. It required using a broad brush and diluted paint (yellow, purple and opaque gold):

8. Working on details with a pen once more. The whole drawing looks more "sharp" that way:

In a Vampiric Mood

A few pen drawings for a little break from painting.  In comparison with watercolors this technique is truly relaxing :) (at least for me). You don't have to prepare an ergonomic workspace which would enable you to use  a painting palette, a jar with water, paper towels,  and several other necessary tools. Also the daylight, which wouldn't change the perception of colors, is not really required. You don't have to wait UNTIL the paint dries. You don'e have to harry up to paint something BEFORE the paint dries. And of course there is no risk that you'll put the brush into your tea or drink the water from the jar.

Dla odpoczynku od farb - kilka ilustracji piórkiem. W porównaniu z akwarelkami ta technika to prawdziwy relaks :) (przynajmniej dla mnie). Nie trzeba przygotowywać ergonomicznego miejsca pracy pozwalającego na sprawne korzystanie z palety z farbami, słoika z wodą, ręczników papierowych i kilku innych niezbędnych przyborów. Nie jest również wymagane  dobre światło dzienne (nie zmieniające odbioru rzeczywistych kolorów). Nie trzeba czekać aż farba wyschnie, lub spieszyć się z namalowaniem jakiegoś fragmentu dopóki farba rozpływa się po kartce. No i nie ma ryzyka, że zamoczy się pędzel w herbacie albo napije wody ze słoika.

This particular commission was even more pleasant because it was partly related to medieval architecture (which is one of my favorite subjects!). Illustrations (7 pieces) were made for a Manuel Cacho's book. I'll write little more about it when the book will be published.

To konkretne zadanie było ponadto o tyle przyjemne, że nawiązywało nieco do architektury średniowiecza (jednego z moich ulubionych tematów!). Ilustracje (sztuk 7) zostały wykonane do książki Manuela Cacho. Napiszę o niej trochę więcej, kiedy wszystko będzie gotowe.

1. A nice, little castle:

1. Sympatyczny, mały zamek:

2. A little less nice gibbet (it's the second gibbet in my freelancer's career :) ):

2. Nieco mniej sympatyczna szubienica (to już druga szubienica w mojej karierze ilustratora :) ):

3. A slightly shabby room of the main character with a quite clever bathtub "invented" by the author of the book:

3. Trochę obskurny pokój głównego bohatera z całkiem sprytną wanną opracowaną przez autora książki:

Details on special request :)

Na specjalne życzenie - detale :)