The brief is to make an illustration in response to this description.
"If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell how Octavia, the spider web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm’s bed.
This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope-ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes- hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children’s games, cable-cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants.
Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long".
"If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell how Octavia, the spider web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm’s bed.
This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope-ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes- hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children’s games, cable-cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants.
Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long".
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (1972)
I started by doodling in my sketchbook, responding to phrases that caught my eye.
My instinct is to look down into the chasm so that the viewer appreciated the feeling of insecurity that must affect the inhabitants. So I looked at Google images of chasms and sketched some of them.
This shape appeals to me so I developed it a bit.
Also I sketched some more of the features of the city.
I found some inspiration from the site but does it float.com, here and here. and thought of Tolkiens illustrations. This lead me to the rather highly coloured paintings by Roerich, an artist I had never heard of, but some of his Himalayan paintings, such as Vanishing Ice (1933) show mountain communities.
Am I being too decisive in choosing to look down? Maybe I should look up? I think that the text calls for some aspects of perspective drawing because I want to convey the feeling of living over an abyss and the sense of impending danger.
Using other peoples photos of chasms seems a bit passive and doesn't give me much scope for exploration. Leafy Hertfordshire is a bit short of dramatic landscapes but there are lumps of fantastically sculptural wood and stone in my garden.
I took a series of photos on my phone (it's not really drawing outdoors weather) and cobbled them together in the montage above. In some of the photos it's not very clear where the structure ends and the garden begins but they were a good start for drawing.
I redrew the mountains on A3 paper so that I had space to add the city in, then mapped out some of the scene using a pencil. I added detail with a fine liner and colour with water-soluble pencil and a touch of paint.
It's a lot busier than the sort of drawing I usually make but I'm not sure that it's as busy as the text describes. I was fairly predictable in my choice of colours, blue skies, green plants and just a touch of orange to lighten things up. It's ridiculous to set a city strung between mountains so I wanted to contrast that with a slightly believable design to make the viewer wonder whether it could really be possible. I intended this design to be looking up at the city but seem to have created a mixed view with its own perspective.
I looked online at how others had interpreted Octavia including this interesting perspective sketched by Cooper Mitchell. Many people had built cities in the sky without the houses like sacks. Most had gone for an overview. I wanted to give a more dynamic feeling than I have achieved so far.
What does it feel like to stand in the city? I want to capture the feeling of looking over the edge as the ladder snakes down away from you. For me the sack like houses are part of the design but it's difficult to convey, when viewing from above, that they are houses.
I drew plastic bags filled with birdseed and paper bags suspended on string...
This is the underdrawing for my next attempt, I rejected my paper bag studies for the cleaner lines of round houses.
and with added colour. I experimented with the background a bit
Then tried lots of versions adding colour to my original drawing with water-soluble coloured pencils and watercolour and adjusting the colour balance on my computer. I used thicker black lines for the elements that I want to make more prominent, a technique I have borrowed from Lucinda Rogers.
The text talks about a few clouds gliding past. I had left clouds in the background but Found it easier to add them on the computer. The image with the chasm didn't work very well so I used the clouds to suggest the chasm. This is my favourite version.
It doesn't include all the details described in the text but I think that it still feels reasonably busy, with many of the elements which I think are important in showing how it might feel to be in the city.
Maybe I should have more houses? It seemed too complicated when I sketched more in. Similarly I would like to have a better representation of the chasm beneath but it looked odd when I drew it in. I wonder if it would look better as a taller, narrower picture but I had nothing to fill the longer space and lost the suggestion of vertigo. Would a drawing bigger at the bottom than at the top work? Next time I should try creating the illustration in layers with the chasm as a separate drawing. Maybe the colour scheme isn't subtle enough? I wanted something eye catching and my instinct is to be very subtle so I'm trying to be more bold and experimental.
Feedback
My tutor felt that the orange orbs weren't obviously houses. I completely agree, this is why other illustrations show them as actual houses rather than sack like structures. Maybe there is a middle ground?
Is this better? The background is a bit too bold, The previous background was made over ages, water-soluble crayon coloured in then washed over in layers. For this version I wanted to be more decisive with the colour but I've made it too dark. I washed/sponged some of the paint off which has made it more patchy but that hints at clouds below. I used Photoshop to thicken them.
Is it better? I'm not sure. On one had I like the brighter colour but I'm not sure if the previous version is livelier? and do the suspended shapes look more like houses? I've looked at it too many times now so I can't see it as a new viewer would.
No comments:
Post a Comment