develpment

I did some more people studies, I'm really enjoying working with the textures and shapes of the clothes. Although I do feel I am going a bit off track with my project now as it's not actually meant to be about the people but the built environment. 

So I need to focus my works and this style back onto what I'm actually meant to be doing and putting the figures into different situations. 

figure work

I spent some time just trying to develop a figure I liked, I initially wanted it to look quite puppet-like

I thought it might look good if the bodies were just shape but the face and expression was detailed, so to convey the fact that there is limited control in the body. But I don't like the way they look, especially as my face drawing isn't very strong. 

So I took a different route and started playing with shape and texture, which I enjoyed a lot more

I really like the look of these figures, it does add a lot of depth having the figure stuck onto the page. I think the puppet strings would look better if they were made of thread or something else 3D, so to add a bit of shadow. I want to develop these people more before I start thinking about final images. 

new direction

After my essay tutorial I decided to take a slightly different direction. I started by trying to draw figures at a bus stop

I'm not very good or confident with drawing figures or faces though, so I think I need to find a way of doing it which will suit my way of working, maybe using shapes or something quite abstracted. 

It was quite hard thinking up other examples similar to this which I could use, so I thought about ways the environment constrain us - such as barriers or lines painted on the floor which keep us all in a particular space. Or obstructions in areas which force us to walk one way instead of another, or the defensive architecture used to prevent homeless people from sleeping in certain areas. 

These are some ideas I had - the way we are manoeuvred round these built cities is quite like being a puppet, one which doesn't know it is being controlled as it is being done in such subtle ways. 

I made this using cut out shapes which are layered on top of each other, I think this works well as it adds depth to the buildings and makes them stand out. I like this way of working, I think it will look quite nice if I used this technique with figures and then had thin, only just noticeable lines leading off them to communicate the puppet strings.