Day 16 – A Parisian Boulevard

The Challenge

Day 16 took me to a Parisian boulevard. After the confined perspective of yesterday’s narrow Italian street, the challenge was to deal with a much broader scene of buildings, trees, pavements and open space. The aim was to create depth without drawing every window and balcony, concentrating instead on the larger shapes and allowing the details to become increasingly simplified as they moved away. The sweeping pavement and kerb were important in leading the eye into the scene, while the trees and figures were there to provide scale and atmosphere rather than become subjects in their own right. Once again, the real challenge was deciding how much information was actually necessary. 

The Sketch

This felt much more like my own drawing. I concentrated on the central building and allowed the architecture around it to become progressively less defined. The sweeping kerb helped establish the depth without needing carefully constructed perspective, while the figures were reduced to little more than marks. The trees were another matter. I am still not entirely comfortable with them and have a tendency either to describe them too much or make them look like an afterthought. Nevertheless, I was pleased that the drawing felt less like an attempt to reproduce a photograph and more like my interpretation of the scene. Trees, however, definitely need more work.

The Verdict – This feels much more like an individual drawing than a copy of the reference. The central building contains enough information to be convincing without becoming architectural illustration, while the sweeping kerb and surrounding buildings create a strong sense of depth. The trees and figures are increasingly becoming suggestions rather than carefully described objects, which is exactly the direction this challenge should be taking. There are still places where the pen could have stopped a few lines earlier, particularly around the roof and balconies, and a stronger foreground shadow might have anchored the scene more firmly. The trees remain uncertain, but that is a problem to work on rather than disguise with more detail. 
Score: 8.7/10. I still think that is far too generous, although annoyingly I agree with most of the assessment.
Reasonable Tyrant’s instruction: If you don’t know how to draw a tree, drawing twice as much tree is unlikely to solve the problem.