Look Up! Scalpel

This is the first of a series of pictures I’ve got planned, I’m calling the series “Look Up!”.

I’m intending to convey that child-like feeling and sense of wonder when staring skywards at the base of a tall building. Regardless of age, one is dwarfed by the enormity.

You may recognise this one from before when I did a video of drawing out the buildings. As you maybe noticed it was drawn freehand and without a ruler, however what you probably wouldn’t have seen were 5-6 light pencil strokes which were drawn with a ruler so that I had a good sense of the perspective whilst drawing my ink lines, after all there’s no rubbing out with those!

Since then all I’ve done is to add the sky which completed the picture to my eyes. There’s often a point where you do too much to any work of art, hopefully getting more experienced at knowing when to stop now.

This is available to buy as a professionally produced art print on 300gsm lustre art card. As the original was drawn on A4 that’s the size I’m having it printed at to keep the quality.

Scalpel on Etsy

Scalpel on eBay

The next in the series will be on A3, possibly even A2 if I can find a print shop that can do a high enough quality scan at that size for a high enough quality reproduction.

7 comments

    • Thank you Meg, to be fair the video I did of drawing the buildings made it look a lot more simple than the reality.

      The reality was being stood on the corner opposite, sketching out various outlines and getting most of them wrong (but still useful as a reference). Then taking a few photos with the phone from various other angles, again for reference.

      The next step was to do a basic 4 x 4 grid on the paper and then measuring up to compare against the photo for some guidelines done in pencil.

      It was only then that I drew in the inked lines which you see on the video, and that is obviously sped up dramatically. I didn’t want to use a ruler as I didn’t want it to look too formal, the natural wobble here and there is probably a bit more “organic” for want of a better word.

      In comparison, doing the sky was a lot more pleasurable as that was just total freehand with the only planning being where I wanted it lighter and darker.

      I think it’s easy for non-artists to think that these pictures throw themselves together driven by some magical natural talent which couldn’t be farther from the truth, in my case at least. Doesn’t help when bozo’s like me post up a video of drawing those buildings in about seconds flat ๐Ÿ˜‰

      Liked by 1 person

      • Ahaha! Youโ€™re not a bozo. Youโ€™re realistic. I think only another artist would really appreciate the video in real time. ๐Ÿ˜‰ Itโ€™s an enormous amount of work!

        Liked by 1 person

  1. Nice one Steve, totally convincing and the sky adds a lot to that. There aren’t too many skyscrapers around here, so anything over a few storeys has this effect on me!

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment