STEAMPUNK TOWN SQUARE

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve shared with you a “full size” watercolor drawing. 

Working on commercial illustrations, solving matters related to moving abroad and preparing online classes in designing fantasy architecture took all my time.

But now I’ve got a good reason for coming back to the blog! And the reason is a drawing commissioned as… (I bet you’ll never guess):

…a Birthday gift :) 

Actually, after completing a sketch, I decided to paint the cake on a separate piece of paper.

I was a little bit afraid, that I would need to make some editions in this part (and I needed indeed!). In such a case I would only need to change the cake without destroying the whole intricate work. That’s why the original looks in this way:

Yes, the base of the cake changed into a fountain. It suits a town square pretty well, isn’t it? 

"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... 

Far Eastern Style

“Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?” 

George R. R. Martin "A Game of Thrones"

 

This time, for a change, my blog post will be concise <<Hurray!>>.

Once more I had an opportunity to try my hand in designing architecture... fantasy architecture of course. I made concept sketches for an upcoming video game Tenesha Must Die (sounds nice, isn't it?).

My job was to design various types of buildings in the Far Eastern style with a dash of hi-tech and fantasy.

Below you can see some sketches of these buildings. The task was actually a little bit more complex than just that. It contained cross sections, floor plans, interior fittings, various construction and decorative details.

Blacksmith's house:

Fort:

Inn/Bar:

+ a lumberjack's house and some ordinary houses. In short, lots of fun for several winter weeks:

"Handmade Guitars"

"In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many strange roads"

"Little Dorrit" - Charles Dickens 

 


Here are 4 of 7models of handmade guitars which I drew for Elly Guitar Co.  Until quite recently I wouldn't expect that there can be so many different body shapes of acoustic guitars (strictly speaking there is one bass and one classic guitar among them). The general idea was to reference with my illustrations to a traditional, "old school" method of building guitars and to emphasize the fact, that each handmade custom guitar is one of a kind.

Oto 4 spośród 7 modeli ręcznie robionych gitar, które rysowałam dla Elly Guitar Co. Jeszcze do niedawna nie przypuszczałabym, że może być aż tyle różnych kształtów gitar akustycznych (tak właściwie to jest wśród nich jeden bas i gitara klasyczna). Generalnym zamierzeniem było nawiązanie do tradycyjnej, "oldschoolowej" metody budowania gitar oraz podkreślenie faktu, że każda z ręcznie robionych gitar jest jedyna w swoim rodzaju.

In the beginning there was chaos...

Na początku był chaos...

... from which an  orderly conception began to emerge...

...z którego powoli zaczęła się wyłaniać uporządkowana koncepcja...

Vintage atmosphere - namely sepia tones and "stains" obtained with watercolors, salt and lots of water. So called "chaos under control".

Klimat vintage, czyli odcień sepii i "przybrudzenia" przy użyciu akwareli, soli i dużej ilości wody. Tzw. "chaos kontrolowany".

A little bit of color added to guitars. The last stage is called "Laborious Handwriting", though this made on a graphic tablet. It allows to make changes more freely.

Nadanie gitarom odrobiny koloru. Ostatni etap nazywa się "Mozolne Odręczne Napisy", choć były zrobione na tablecie graficznym. Pozwala to na bardziej swobodne wprowadzanie zmian.

Any similarities to reneissance sketches are intended :)

Ewentualne podobieństwo do renesansowych szkiców zamierzone :)

All the illustrations can be viewed on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grim-Dream/217781731619496 and soon also on Elly Guitar's company website http://ellyguitars.com/

Wszystkie ilustracje można znaleźć na facebooku https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grim-Dream/217781731619496  , a wkrótce również na stronie firmowej Elly Guitar http://ellyguitars.com/

Guitar Workshop

I've got so terrible emptiness in my head that it will be rather hard to write something eloquent (not for the first time and and not for last I'm afraid). Anyway today's post is going to be nice and pleasant :) It's about one of illustrations for Elly Guitar Co. - a company producing custom-made, hand-made guitars. Click on the pictures for a fullview!

Mam tak koszmarną pustkę w głowie, że raczej ciężko mi będzie napisać coś elokwentnego (nie po raz pierwszy i raczej nie ostatni). Niemniej dzisiejszy wpis będzie miły i przyjemny :) Chodzi o jedną z ilustracji dla Elly Guitar Co. - firmy wykonującej gitary na zamówienie, w tradycyjny ("odręczny") sposób. 

1. A few-minutes preliminary sketch.  Initially it was meant to be a caricature of a guitar-maker (Patrick) in his workshop. It developed, went through a number of changes and finally...

1. Kilkuminutowy wstępny szkic.  Początkowo chodziło o narysowanie karykatury twórcy (Patricka) w swoim warsztacie. Szkic ewoluował, przechodził szereg zmian, aż w końcu...

2. The guitar-maker was removed , so he wouldn't divert attention from the workshop itself. However he have left his baseball cup and glasses.

2. Lutnik został usunięty, żeby nie odwracać uwagi od samego warsztatu. Zostawił jednak po sobie czapkę i okulary. 

3. First layer of colour - general color scheme.

3. Pierwsza warstwa koloru - ogólna kolorystyka.

4. Second layer : adding a delicate vignette, emphasizing of details, diversifying colors and separating the foreground from the background by "cooling" the background with bluish scheme.

4. Druga warstwa : delikatna winieta, podkreślanie detali, większe zróżnicowanie kolorystyki oraz mocniejsze rozdzielenie  planów przez "ochłodzenie" tła niebieskawym odcieniem.

A short glance at details:

Rzut oka na detale:

5. Lighting. It's probably the biggest change in the illustration's atmosphere, though paradoxically least time-consuming. I admit it - Photoshop came to help. Around the fragment which was meant to be illuminated by the lamp, I set up a semitransparent violet layer to sink into darkness the rest of the workshop. I guess I've just liked violet color.

5. Oświetlenie. Prawdopodobnie najbardziej drastyczna zmiana w wyrazie rysunku, choć paradoksalnie najmniej czasochłonna. Przyznaję, Photoshop przyszedł z pomocą. Wokół fragmentu, który miał być oświetlony przez lampę, ustawiłam półprzezroczystą fioletową warstwę, żeby pogrążyć w półmroku resztę warsztatu.   Chyba właśnie polubiłam fioletowy kolor.

http://ellyguitars.com/elly-story.html

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