FACED WITH A 'WHITE' PAGE

So my rocky travels bring me to 'White Day'. I don't mean I've been to where they shot Rocky to some how get me in the mood for illustrating, or that I've been to THE Rockies. I'm sure you knew that but I wouldn't want you reading on thinking that or we could end up in a right twizzle.

White Day needed only a few things to get it going, a house, room, boy [Toby], and his cat, Jeffrey.

For some reason I started on the house first and not the main character. The house is a character though really, kind of. Ok maybe it isn't but it might have explained why I ignored Toby for the house! The house was sketchy in my head. I knew I wanted a nice country house, tall, homely, some where you would of enjoyed growing up. Something right out of Famous Five. The illustrations with the house in them just wouldn't have worked with a modern house, or a terrace, or a Barrat home. To the left top are some of the inspiration pictures I gathered together. Not always just the shape either but sometimes the mood of them, or a detail. Yes that is the Weasley's house from Harry Potter, maybe a bit too topsy turvy for me, but in a very nice setting. Obviously something I was going to need to address as well.

To the left are some house designs. I might need to swap these pics out so you can see the detail a bit better. After researching I was pretty sure of the type of house I wanted. Now then, stop, don't be nasty, but I realised it was going to do my nut in if I had to draw this house from various different angles and work out the perspective and also just thinking of interesting angles to have it in.

So I had the idea of making a maquette but in a 3D package. This way I could work out my compositions [and as you will see from later posts, not very well at the start] and camera angles if you like well in advance of drawing. Now at first I thought this was cheating. But then why should it be? Some artists might draw subjects from various different angles to get what they need, some will use models, maquettes to of course. It seemed the perfect solution. So as you can see to the left here I built the house and the garden [some simplified trees for basic shape and foliage position]. The renders to the left are the final outputs I needed for tracing and then working on in the illustrations. The one to the right is just a nicer render to show off the model a bit. Now this was complete allI needed was Toby's room, Toby and his cat...