With the preparatory sketches done, I had several ideas: if I were to use the first drawing I could draw an industrial area, with cranes and machines. The second one could represent, as mentioned in the last post, a poor Victorian neighbourhood, while the third one could be the exact opposite: a rich district street with a menacing mood induced by a chiaroscuro lighting scenario.
The contrast between the poor and the rich in that period was what stuck with me after doing some research (and wandering around Assassin's Creed Syndicate's environment to get some inspiration). I felt like the industrial area environment wouldn't be able to tell as much of a compelling story of the disparity between classes, so I discarded it quite early in my process. I proceeded to draw some thumbnail for the poor district environment and the rich street one.
This helped me make the decision of proceeding with the laundry street, since I found the scene more interesting and able to tell the story of its inhabitants better. The objects are distributed in the foreground and background of the page evenly, creating the impression of depth. Moreover, I think it gives me more opportunities of storytelling through details.
In the left corner I changed the scene a bit to show more of the buildings and give more space so I wouldn't have to cut the pot at the bottom of the page. It looked way better and less crammed than the first thumbnail, so I ended up going with that option.
I began by sketching out the scene. I added some details such as the broken window to create more interest since I felt like that wall in the foreground was too empty. I saw the opportunity of illustrating poverty through the state that the buildings are in. I did this with the broken shutters of the window farther away too.
I decided that the light source would be the two windows to the left, candlelight seeping through them into the dark street. I started shading while keeping this in mind and tried to keep a high contrast between light and shadow while doing so:
I quite like how the folds on the clothes ended up. There is variety in the tones of gray and they don't look overworked, like I usually tended to do with the light objects. Moreover, they contrast with the darker surroundings.
I faded the top of the buildings, since they didn't add anything interesting to the composition, so that the points of interest, the street and the objects populating it, would remain the focus.
I really like the lighting since it casts interesting shadows on the ground, but I thought the scene could use more contrast. The ground was also very plain so I added some cobblestones, only a few, so it wouldn't end up looking too busy or overworked. This was the final result:
After the feedback, I fixed the weird shadow of the pants as best as I could and darkened the back of the street in order to direct the attention to the foreground. I also did my best to add more detail and contrast on the hanged clothes.
This is the final result:
Looking back, I could have added more contrast in order to properly achieve the mood I was aiming for: a depressing, almost scary night scene. In my drawing, things are a little bit to bright, and the objects close to the back of the alley could have been obscured more by shadow. Otherwise, I really like how the details of the clothes turned out, as well as the machine on the left.
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