04-23-2011, 06:32 AM
Houston has four distinct areas with large building skylines, and I am thinking I will do all four areas as backdrop paintings. We have the downtown area which is the major area for skyscrapers, south of downtown we have the Texas Medical Center, to the southwest there is the Greenway Plaza area, and west of downtown is the "uptown" area. In addition, there are numerous tall buildings scattered all about the area.
I did an image search on google, and found tons of photos of the various areas. Then I tinkered with the photos in Photodraw to enlarge them to a size that feels right for the layout. Then I printed them out in both color and black and white. I'll cut out the buildings from the black and white photos and use them as guides to get the outside edges layed out on the backdrop.
The first photo below is Greenway Plaza, the second is downtown. I don't think it will be too difficult to paint them using the previously learned techniques from the other backdrops, considering they are mostly geometric shapes. The hard part looks to be all the tiny windows, thousands of them! I'm thinking maybe cut masking tape in little thin strips and place them both horizontally and vertically to outline the windows, then drybrush the windows in. This would definitely be tedious, but seems the best way. Freehanding them in would be too inconsistent I fear. If anyone has suggestions, I'm listening!
Not sure when I will actually start on these, as I have a few other projects going, not the least of which is cleaning up the layout room and my workbench.
I did an image search on google, and found tons of photos of the various areas. Then I tinkered with the photos in Photodraw to enlarge them to a size that feels right for the layout. Then I printed them out in both color and black and white. I'll cut out the buildings from the black and white photos and use them as guides to get the outside edges layed out on the backdrop.
The first photo below is Greenway Plaza, the second is downtown. I don't think it will be too difficult to paint them using the previously learned techniques from the other backdrops, considering they are mostly geometric shapes. The hard part looks to be all the tiny windows, thousands of them! I'm thinking maybe cut masking tape in little thin strips and place them both horizontally and vertically to outline the windows, then drybrush the windows in. This would definitely be tedious, but seems the best way. Freehanding them in would be too inconsistent I fear. If anyone has suggestions, I'm listening!
Not sure when I will actually start on these, as I have a few other projects going, not the least of which is cleaning up the layout room and my workbench.