Urban Sketching: From Sketch to Concept

Hello again there, sorry it's been a while since I last posted, much renovation was needed for my website and portfolio. Much has happened but for now I will show you some of the recreation sketches that end up as valuable visual studies for concepts! I think it can be easy to forget about good old sketching sometimes but it's surprising how useful it can be with regular practice.

Despite the biting cold, I decided to do some more urban sketching in the London area to draw some architecture and anything I fancied really. I ended up sketching some buildings around central London and I wanted to use these observations to make a line art design. I really liked the style of one of the buildings I saw as it reminded me of Paris.

crude sketch book

concept I made from the visual studies

On another brisk day I took a trip to Canterbury, and not only did I find an amazing retro games store, I had a wander around the magnificent Canterbury Cathedral. It had been a while since I'd been there previously and it was calming to just sit (or stand in some areas) and draw the surrounding architecture. There were a couple of sketches I quite liked but there was one in particular that I preferred for design purposes.

sketch

I also used this opportunity to experiment with only using two colours to mix for both light and dark areas (blue and orange) and it was a quick way to add atmosphere to a digital painting.