Of all the places I want to visit someday, Japan is at the top of my list. Not sure when that will actually happen though, so in the meantime I’ll have to settle for drawing pictures of it. I’ve been spending a bit of time organizing and updating my massive collection of reference photos and came across some gorgeous Japanese street scenes by photographer Masahiro Miyagi posted on Unsplash (my go-to site for free-use reference images–fantastic resource for artists!) Those ended up being the inspiration for this month’s illustration.
I started out with a sketch based on the reference I chose of a street in Kyoto:
Even though I liked the overall layout, the foreground looked pretty empty, and there didn’t seem to be much of a story going on so I ended up adding in a girl to be the main focus.
Here’s the initial color block-in:
One of my favorite features of the reference were the lanterns, so to emphasize them I made them the primary light source and kept the rest of the background pretty dark to provide contrast.
Next came the rendering phase, which took a lot longer than I had planned! I haven’t done a lot of night scenes, so trying to get the lighting and shadows right was a challenge.
Finally I finished up by adding a glow effect coming from the lanterns, adjusting the light shining on the girl, and cleaning up some messy details. Here’s the finished piece:
I love the little cat peeking out from the alleyway!
I think this is one of my favorites so far!
What about you, what’s on your travel list? Any recommendations?