"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!

SÖDERMALM, STOCKHOLM

“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”

I guess I haven’t painted any existing landscapes since a long time... Oh, I just had to check it. I haven’t painted any existing landscapes since May 2015, which gives us over 2,5 year! Looks like my record. This previous painting presented a high school building from my hometown.

This one is a view of an island where I’m living right now. Nah, I’m not living in any of those buildings, but the surrounding is pretty awesome anyway.

There are sooo many inspiring places in Stockholm that I would like to draw. I’ve even made a short to-do list, but, as always, lack of spare time can thwart my plans.

To the point! Drawing process:

1.      An accurate pencil sketch:

2.      I started painting (as usually) with the sky. Then it came turn for roofs. 

3.      And the walls. I used here a thin brush with a flat tip.

4.      The next step was painting windows and finally, the water reflection. OH, MY GOD, I’ve been struggling with this reflection so hard.

I'm glad that it's finished. I just hope that I won't have to wait another 2,5 year for painting some nice, real view :) 

"History Lesson in Pictures"

"There are no innocent. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility."

Stieg Larsson, "The Girl Who Played With Fire"

At the end of the last year I got a quite noble task, namely preparing a series of illustrations related with the Baptism of Poland (2016 is the 1050th anniversary of this event). The National Centre for Culture (NCK) gave me a great deal of freedom regarding technique and subjects, with only one stipulation: "no controversial themes". When the condition "no controversial themes" was repeated for the third time during the preliminary talks, I began to ponder about what so controversial could appear there... but haven't come up with anything brilliant.

Anyway, here are some of these works. Ready for a short history lesson? Here we go!

"Unification of Tribes" - one of the main consequences of Christening of Poland was unifying few tribes and creating one land with one sovereign.

"Old Beliefs" - that's the sad one actually. Statues of ancient gods were being destroyed on a massive scale and most Slavic beliefs gone irrecoverably, as they weren't written down.

"Writing" -  Writing came to Poland along with Christian monks. Finally!

"Architecture and Art" - here on the example of St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.

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...