How to steal like an artist (and still create something new) part 2: thumbnailing environments (composition + design)
For several days I felt blocked, unable to imagine the final piece. I tried to draw the building in 3D to better visualise it in space - but it was still difficult. Nothing felt right. Until I remembered a question I constantly forget to ask before starting a drawing:
What does this environment feel like?
This is the base question that will influence my composition decisions. I designed a tower from which people jump and glide all over the kingdom. This function and the overall wind kingdom theme already gives me cues for the form language I need to use to bring over the feeling I need:
High/vertical forms (for showing the forms stretching upwards towards the birds)
Open space (sky, probably a worm’s-eye perspective. Should feel like freedom)
Wind (curled forms/diagonals, link to the culture)
Yellow-red color gamut with blue contrasts for the steppe integration. Something like that (not final):
I sat down and brainstormed: how do I start? What’s the most essential part? Perspective and zoom. I can’t start drawing without knowing from where I’m looking at the tower.
For the start I decided to go with diagonal from the tower, either from below or from the top, like we’re birds looking at it. I wanted to show the tower AND the kingdom receding into the background around the lake.
First of all: don’t even try to just draw in the building right away while exploring thumbnails. Draw boxes and simple forms in perspective first - we just need to explore how the picture will feel, where we feel the weight in the picture. Silhouettes are enough. Perspective doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t try to do something impressive at this point — that’s a job for later, otherwise we get caught up in unnecessary things using our energy on things that we likely won’t even use. Thumbnails are supposed to be messy for exploration.
At least that’s what I’ve been stuck with, subconsciously wanting to create some impressive detailed thumbnails pros do on youtube. Messy boxes go brrr. Save your sanity.
To get into the feeling of space in my head (not exploring composition yet) I just started with some random rotations of the abstract scene draft
Okay, space clicks. Let's talk layout: Foreground, midground, background. I took a few artworks to analyse how they're build. You can pretty clearly distinct the layers, which creates depth = sense of space.
Let's throw some overlapping boxes/shapes onto the canvas to explore different layering variations, since overlapping creates the illusion of depth. When I look at the observations above, the layering feels like something 2D to me (to think about it in the thumbnailing phase). I will really focus on just create random boxes without thinking of the place as a 3D minecraft server much.
Now I think we got something that looks closer to an artwork with a composition. Now - how do we actually use composition?
Currently I decided to go with this thumbnail. I won't be able to implement my tower design in this one, but anyways, it was still a good practice. Let's take it on the canvas size we're going to draw this artwork on and dissect how the eye goes through it. Composition is pretty fluid, but usually follows the principle that the focal points have the most contrast = most interest, everything else is supporting the eye-path towards it.
For those perfectionists like me: the focal point doesn't have to be something grandeur/with a lot of meaning and importance. It can just be an object that doesn't make you rethink your entire existence. For me it's a smaller silhouette of the tower in the distance — just because it's the highest point of the wind-kingdom and so does create a feeling of altitude and wind, which is the core theme. In the end, we just need to show that it's a wind kingdom. So much about choosing the focal point.
You can have several focal points, but they should have a hierarchy. Composition is just the path your eyes take through the picture. Let's talk about paths:
Leading lines
I chose this point of view because it has a good view on the whole circle-formed plateau. We look from the beginning of it and the road leads our eye to the focal point — the tower.
In the foreground (FG) I got a tree, which horizontally-shaped chunks look into the direction the road goes. The edges of the buildings there are also aligned with the diagonal road direction, which makes me look from the lower right diagonally to the middle-left. There, another tree chunks look into the direction of the road and into the direction directly of the tower, directly over the lake. From there we transition into the middle ground (MG).
The MG is slightly less detailed, but the leading lines (edges of roofs) still align with the direction of the curve, guiding us from the middle-left towards the background, the top right.
Other compositional elements
The BG has least detail. The buildings are now just horizontally aligned. The shape of the clouds, the birds flying towards the tower and the sun setting behind the tower's roof all are compositional elements so our eyes end up at the tower. In addition, the bright sun contrasts a lot with the dark silhouette of the tower, creating more contrast. That's also a compositional element we will talk about next.
3. Light & shadow
I made a rough map of how I envision the shadow shapes. Here the right side of the picture is rather dark at places where the sun rays fall behind the object. The more behind — the darker the other side of the object. The dark planes in the lower right half are on the background of the also darker plateau side planes, so they don't stand out much out of low contrast. The left, light part's shadows aren't very dark, so there's also not much contrast. But the sky where the sun is and the tower? That's the high contrast point that draws our eyes in.
4. Color
I just messily brushed in the colors I chose at the beginning. At the tower I used the blue & red for the contrast. For the other buildings I let them melt more into each other, but the shadows are more blue (sky ambient light, I can dissect this in another entry) and the planes hit by sunlight are slightly more yellow.
Finally, we got the final sketch!
Videos used for understanding help:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViEPZsLolls&list=PL-ndvBIAbfwgIrNN8panNWqf-mMQyEIaf&index=5
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU3oPFqHLuM&list=PL-ndvBIAbfwgIrNN8panNWqf-mMQyEIaf&index=3
Technical skills used in this path:
Color theory (color contrast)
Composition: FG/BG/BG; leading lines; light/dark and color contrast
"The emotions raise through light and rest in color."
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