I chose to draw Charleston, SC, so these references help me to get an idea of what street in Charleston I would like to draw. References are helpful because they show you pictures of the exact place so you can see all the detail and different buildings, trees, and other objects that need to be put into the drawing to make it seem realistic.
A thumbnail sketch is a small, quick drawing that explores an idea visually. Drawing thumbnail sketches before you draw your final draft help you figure out where you would like to place everything in the drawing. I chose to draw three different thumbnail sketches just to help me decide which picture I wanted to use for my final drawing.
This is just a larger sketch of the picture I decided to draw. I chose this picture because I thought it displayed Charleston well by having the water right next to the streets and the unique buildings. Drawing this sketch before drawing my final picture was helpful because I could practice drawing what I was going to draw in my final drawing to scale.
I communicate through my work. This artwork is intended to show my love for Charleston, SC. As I was drawing I noticed it was hard to show detail in the buildings because of how small I drew them. It was also hard to show detail because of the median I chose. I chose to use colored pencils which made it hard to show most detail. This artwork shows what I like because I love the city of Charleston. I would like to go to college there or move there when I graduate from college. I love cities that are on the beach, so drawing a part of Charleston that is right on the water expresses what I like very well. I take risks. Right when I chose to draw the city of Charleston I knew it would be difficult, considering the town has a lot of detail to it. But, I took my time and worked really hard to draw the city to the best of my ability. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I'm used to mainly always shading with just pencil, so, I figured coloring and shading with colored pencil will be something different to try. I solve problems. I noticed when I was almost finished drawing that I had a lot of open space on the right side of my foreground on my drawing. So, I added palm trees next to the buildings to take up space on the paper. I did not plan for there to be so much space left but I came up with an idea and fixed my problem with a simple solution of adding more palm trees to the drawing.