Visual Language - Environmental Story Telling - Indoor Bar

I visited a local bar as my third location. Inside, the walls of the bar are extremely noisy, with bright coloured posters and layered images all over the walls. However, because I wanted to re-create the typical 90's cartoon, block colour effect, I decided to create thumbnails that contained only the key elements of the interior. I was drawn to the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and the combination of high tables and booths. 

Because the bar had a retro vibe, I decided to limit my colour palette. I used green tones, with yellow to highlight and create focal points/ light. I wanted to keep the structure simple. I kept in mind how a scene would play out in this area, by placing objects around the bar. I used watered down ink and yellow oil pastel to create the contrast between light and dark. I focused too little on the window. If I were to create this image again, I would create more depth in and around the window, to clearly depict that it is a window.

Because I felt as though the previous image was too stark, I decided to go for more muted colours in this composition. I also opted to create a more spaced out layout. From the upstairs balcony of the bar, the view looked similar to this. I feel like this is my least successful piece because the perspective isn't good, and the placement of objects don't corrispond.

I created this background by doing a wash of green ink, and layered over the top with bright oil pastels. I feel like I captured the 90's cartoon theme that I was aiming for successfully through the use of bright, block colours. 

I wanted to create a background for a quiet and intimate scene. I etched out the table and chairs using bright coloured oil pastels, and then did a light wash of watered down murky ink. This caused the oil pastels to me a more muted colour, but not completely washed. The table is the focal point, which was what I was aiming for. This background could be used for a scene where two characters interact in conversation across from the table, and the negative space around could be filled with background characters.

Here, I attempted to created a focused shot of the bar. I used the same technique as before, but with black ink. My aim was to create an extremely focused background, that would be used as a conversational shot inside the bar. The image came out way too dark, however, it could be used for an evening scene inside the badly lit bar. It's hard to tell what the background is supposed to be so in the future, I will steer clear of using washes of black ink.

Overall, I feel like this set of five images are my weakest. I feel as though my aim to create a simple background ended up with childishly drawn images. From this exercise, I have learnt that I need to work on perspective inside, as well as straying away from colours that are too dark for the environment I am attempting to create.