APP Home (AOI): Developing Ideas - Experimenting with Compositions

I decided to explore into the idea of portraying the London city line and tried to think of ways of how the character's were to be displayed with it. The problems I had were that (if I did go with the idea of the woman as My Fair Lady) that either London would be too small or the characters would be. So I tried to think of different compositions and ways to place the characters.

After sketching the city line with the two giants – Gog and Magog – floating in the sky I went along to conduct an experiment, focusing on how I was going to lay out London and see what colours I could possibly use for the sky. I settled for purple and blues to create that 'magical' atmosphere – taking inspiration from Jan Pienkowski – and used black ink for the silhouettes.

I wasn't so sure on this idea because although I loved the colours used, I wasn't very keen on the city line. I couldn't decide whether or not to draw all of the landmarks of London or just to focus on one area.

I played with the idea of the two giants and thought of displaying them as guardians of London, looming above it protectively.

However the problem with this is that the giants could come across as quite aggressive as they are standing guard, and this could produce connotations of them barring outsiders. 

Therefore I went back to the idea of the woman, which then led me to focus on the composition of London as I began to think of those used in storyboards and what I had gathered in my research of perspective and creating depth.

At this time I was also juggling with the idea of mapping out London and then drawing the route of the Lord Mayor's celebration, but my mind kept flicking back to the idea of displaying the city line in an unusual perspective and having the characters in the sky. This was an idea inspired from my research on portraying London in an unusual way shown in Lizzie Mary Cullen's work.
As I couldn't get out of this idea I played with perspectives a bit more and thought of how I'm to draw the cityline. I did some research on Google maps on this as well as taking a trip to London to see what buildings surrounded the key landmarks.

Conclusion:

I now have an idea set; I was going to use a one-point perspective for the cityline and have the characters floating in the sky. My next step is now to figure out how I'm going to draw my characters and try sketching out the London Eye, Big Ben and other buildings that I'm hoping to add into my illustration.

I haven't done such an interesting composition before so this illustration might be quite challenging, but I'm keen on trying out new techniques so that I can develop as an illustrator.