Behind The Scenes: Fall Diorama (Patreon)

With the spooky month behind us, I wanted to focus on something simple.
As I was not in the mood to recreate anything popular, I turned again into seasonal palettes. November has it all when it comes to mood and emotion. Seasons are often my go-to pick when I feel overloaded or uninspired.

But the timeline was unforgiving again, so I needed to keep the scale of the scene as small as possible. It became an exercise in restraint, focusing on the important details, rather than than a large storytelling.

Visit the full Pinboard here

As always, the reference board is my compass through the creative process, each image a piece of a puzzle. I mostly gather my images in a Pinterest board and then pick the best candidates to bring them to PureRef to organize and filter through.

The damp cobblestones reflect a recent rain. A solitary bench in the park, an umbrella left behind by a passerby. A light dispersed in a light drizzle.

I don't restrain myself when it comes to picking references. Photos, 3d illustrations, hand-draw illustrations. I get them all. Any one of these can hide some important detail, that can elevate your work, while the 3d references and photos can also help you decide on style and lighting mood.

I can't stress enough the importance of creating a sketch first. It's where the final layout emerges from the fog of imagination. It's about the selection and arrangement of elements to balance the composition and about picking and scattering the details to round up the story you want to tell.

I had few main elements I wanted to balance. The cobblestones, bench and streetlamp, tree and a rogue umbrella. To emphasize the scale and the fact, that this is a piece of emotion torn from a larger picture, I decided to blend the cobblestone street into the background, so it looks like its cut out from a street.

Next, I played with the scale relationships, making the tree and lamp much smaller in contrast to the bench and the rest. This is a deliberate choice to make the bench and umbrella stand out and emphasize stylized and emotional nature of the image as well. That this is not something that wants to recreate some real space, rather deliver a feeling.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.