Overall, I’m so pleased I have finished this module and achieved what I have!
I have been a bit behind and only got really into the project in the last 2 months, I have found it very hard to motivate and have inspiration but it kicked in eventually!
Creating the houses probably took the longest, as I was going to add elements and create imaginary houses .... However I visited a few local towns and was inspired by the beauty that already existed. I worked from photographs and sketches I had collected and worked on the composition of the houses in means of where windows were and roof slopes and window displays.
After I was able to do this, things started flowing . I used pencil as I have used it in a past project and when scanned and edited, it adds a texture from all the smudging your hand makes when wiping across it. It does make it difficult if you want to rub out a part, traditionally or digitally, as it effects the tone of the page.
With the pencil edited, I then created a separate layer to add the colour behind. I wanted bright, limited colours. At first I though this would mean perhaps three colours across the whole mat, but as I was creating the buildings, I just wanted to have fun and enjoy all the colours on offer. I still maintained my limited colour palette by reducing each house to 3 colours, plus the pencil overlay colour. I really enjoyed spending time with the ink dropper tool trying to find just the right shade, and it felt good looking at a finished building and it looking smart.
This ended up with me having an array of sorbet, zingy buildings.
The road layout was the next battle, and it took me a good week or two just woking on jigging the buildings around and getting the colour of the road right so the whole design came together. I didn’t want to spend all this time on the buildings to ruin it at the last moment! At first I though straight roads worked, and the houses in line with them.... but it was a bit boring and straightforward. I tried curves and corners in the road. It was surprisingly hard to come up with a layout that you could imagine driving around and was interesting to look at. This is where I thought I could take a part of an existing road layout- I went onto trusty Google Maps and searched around Cheltenham for a good square to take. The one I took was very similar to the final layout - I removed some roads and traced around it, making it my own and all wiggly.
I played with textures and the large calendar covered in roller ink worked well as it had straight lines within it to keep a grid effect and construction within the image.
Buildings - check. Road - check. But there was space for more. What else does a town or village have? Shrubs, trees, plants, litter! Except the lat, I drew out some trees and grass looking things in pencil, scanned them in and used colour overlay to blend them in greens and yellows into the scene.
