Design Idea - Inken Cities

I've been doing art a few years now and I've found my niche, but also I think sometimes I need to branch out and try new things. One of my design ideas is to explore city scapes in 2D mediums, I know this is unimaginative based on the fact my whole last project revolved around cities. Looking at the drawings of Da Vinci I appreciated the great skill it must take to draw such detailed images in ink. On a cold drizzly afternoon I did a little experimentation with a small brush and yellow, blue and red ink and did some doodle to explore ink as a drawing medium. I found it hard to get crisp fine lines like the kind in the sketchbooks of Da Vinci so I went off message and started doing abstract flowing lines instead. After a little experimentation I was left with what appeared to be a woman straddling a burning tree with no arms, at this point I immediately abandoned figure drawing. Instead I create a little city scape framed by rolling hills, a flat sea and a sun setting sky. Having travelled all over the world to a lot of cities I always find theres parks and gardens to bring in nature to the urban abyss. It could make a very interesting final piece to explore the relationship between nature and urban environments. This would link well to my question and it would explore my theme of machinery, all be it in a residential format. This work was inspired by Da Vinci at first but embraces a more impressionistic feel as I developed my use of ink, If I carry on with this design idea I would look and skylines and painters. My issues with this design is it moves away from doing what I really love which is sculpture and it might be unwise to use a medium I’m not very skilled in.

I wanted to do at least one piece for this project that is traditional artistic flat mediums, and my idea to look at engineering in cities and how it relates to nature and social relationships was well suited to ink drawings. This work was inspired by Da Vinci in regards to its medium but it’s subject is one I've researched extensively in the past. I wanted to look at the interplay between nature and urbanisation and to explore the most common engineering feats; urban settlements. The work wasn't wonderfully successful, I achieved a good visual effect but didn’t demonstrate a massive amount of skill, I used a variety of brushes to create the image out of ink and then used watercolour markers to pick out detail, high and low lights. To finish off the piece I sprayed it with a UV spray which blended the colours and gave it a shiny finish like a photo graph or acrylic painting. It is not so much what I have learnt but what I have reaffirmed from this piece which will influence the future of my work, I am greater gifted in 3D than artist mediums with one less dimension, for the remained of this project I’ll stick to mainly sculpture and assemblage however I will still do some drawings in various mediums to support my work. Part of this work was to explore urban engineering, buildings and the urbanisation of the world, with this in mind what I’ll take form this idea is to look at how engineering and technology is starting to permeate every facet of modern life.