Visual Language - Environmental Story telling - Graveyard/church

After my previous experimentations, I have come to terms with the fact that I'm not too great at creating interior perspective. This has lead me to concentrate more on my exterior scenes.

This was my first attempt. I transferred the image and medium from my thumbnail of the graveyard/ church. I used grey-scale Pro-markers, However, I find this to look boring. The original thumbnail looked nice, but after creating a larger version, I decided not to continue with the grey-scale style.

I decided to focus on the trees and tombstones. This led me to visually research into twisted branches and trees so I could ass these to my backgrounds.

I liked how the branches turned out using graphite pencil, however I still wanted to create an exterior that included sharp, outlined edges.

This is my first completed exterior image. I wanted the main focus to be on the tree, so I created texture by defining the bark with pen. I added shading by using pencil. I added the moon in the background to keep with the graveyard themes that are associated with graveyards.  

Even though I like how this one turned out, I still wanted to create a murky atmosphere in the scenery, so I decided to use graphite stick for the rest of my images.

Here, I included the church in the foreground to capture where the scene would be taking place. If I was to create an animation within this scene, I would use it as a transitional shot, where the characters would be walking into the church. I placed the tree towards the left, so the branches creep in and point in the direction of where the scene would be taking place.

I wanted this scene to be lighter and brighter, so I used the graphite stick lightly. I wanted to create distance in the scene, so I added gravestones in the distant as well as the tree. I made the building lean more to the right, to emphasise the uneven ground as well as fit with the wonky gravestones.

I wanted to create an establishing shot from a distance. I decided to create a silhouette of the church upon a hill, with a pathway descending to the bottom of the page to create perspective. I took into account the rule of thirds when creating this image, by placing the church on top of the hill, in the last third of the scene. I kept the cloud in front of the moon because I felt like it fit with the eerie shot of the church. 

I feel like this is my strongest piece form this project. I used a mixture of pencil and graphite stick to create the contrast between the bottom half and top half of the page. I created a foggy atmosphere by blurring the edges of the gravestones and also adding a wavy stream of lightness between the gravestones. If I was to animate in this scene, I would have the characters creeping between the gravestones, and the smoke moving around them.

Overall, I enjoyed this scenery more than the other two sceneries. I feel like this is because I am more comfortable creating drastic atmospheres, rather than day to day ones inside of shops and bars. I will definitely consider using pencil and Graphite stick when creating atmospheric backgrounds in the future.