Trip to Warwick Castle... plus some life drawing

To follow up on my last blog post which was more of a catch up of my personal stuff I thought I would tell you right away whats been going down in that department this week and also to talk about how the problem of unfinished finals (ie car) will be solved in the upcoming weeks.

This Saturday my good friend Denzil Forde and I went to the nearby Warwick castle to gather some reference material for his character project and do some drawing. After some panicking and train stations and many minutes of running we finally got to the Warwick station and walked through the town to the castle. Even though I live in a small village in Worcestershire my family comes from Warwickshire (mainly Kenilworth) and I have been to all the spots many times. Almost weekly visits to Stratford-on-Avon in the summer. I've visited Kenilworth Castle, Warwick castle Kenilworth Common and many other  places time and time again but not much since I started the course a year ago and see the place in a new way. We visited the amazing collegiate church in Warwick with its magnificent vertical stonework from its Perpendicular Gothic style which took the eye upwards and toward the stain-glassed windows.

We also spent some time in the crypts which have some awesome dark Norman Gothic arches and could really work well as a game environment.

After the church it was a short walk to the castle which was very much how I remember it (apart from increased ticket prices) walking around the grounds and along the ramparts was fun and there were lots of chances to gather plenty of texture references and character reference photos both from the costumes and creepy mannequins they had there but also from some epic poses.

When it came to drawing we didn't have much time and because of rain we couldn't get drawing outside the castle for long so most of my thumbs were of the great hall were the crackling fire warmed up and cast some lovely lighting conditions on the room with all the intricate ornaments lit up.

I didn't get time to do a final and this brings me on to my plan to not do this personal project blog post next weekend and possibly the weekend after that. We have started our new project which is to make two dichotomous characters which work together as a pair. for a 3 week time frame this is a big project and because of its nature I really want to hit all the stretch goals so I wont be developing finals for two or three weeks for my personal work and plan to bash them out over the last week of term/Christmas. I also did this post now so when I do the blog posts for the character project they all sit together and tell one cohesive story for the project.

To finish up here are my latest life drawings. Enjoy.