Jack The Ripper Environment

 04/12/20 - Week 9

I am quite happy with this piece. The practice pieces from last week definitely really helped me with the outcome of this one since they led me a lot stylistically.

The composition is interesting I think, though its not particularly complex which is perhaps an issue, but I didn't want to take from the intricacy of the building itself, and I felt adding more would maybe over complicate the piece.

This piece took me quite a while as I wanted to try to make it quite accurate, or at least enough that it wouldn't throw the piece off. There is definitely places here and there, such as the windows, that don't align with the correct horizon points but looking at it right now things don't pop out to me too badly. I first laid a base with pencil to try to avoid any mistakes, obviously one of the cons of using pen is the fact you cant rub it out so any mistakes that happened in this piece have just been integrated.

I worked through the piece trying to make sure nothing was squished in or left out and tried to add as much detail as I could, though I was struggling a bit with getting some of the very fine detail I since the pen I was using was perhaps too thick, or one line in the wrong place wouldn't leave room for detail in that area. The worst area for this is probably the two front pillars as they had some details on them that I couldn't really make out and I tried to fill in without thinking, unfortunately.

After adding all the detail in the places I wanted it, I then added in the shadow on the walls. I am not sure if having detail here would have benefited the piece since I feel the scale has sort of make the style I liked so much from the practice pieces a bit less effective. I still think I like it like this though I am not sure if others would agree so much. I also added some shading to the sky in pencil as I thought it would act as a frame to the whole piece. This was a good idea and I really like how this looks and I feel it brings out the building itself much more than if it were to match the colour of the page.

Overall, this was challenging but fun and I liked the payoff of seeing all the detail come together to form this grand building. There's definitely some things I'd change, such as adding the lamppost and the pavement below as I think it really takes from the piece, but pen isn't very forgiving.