This time I went for a desert scene, featuring people and a camel, that has some strange (mystic) elements. Created entirely in Affinity Designer, it is meant to be a 100% vector drawing once the drawing is completed. Therefore no vector brushes were used, because they are not real vectors. The desert is a unusual place that probably harbours many secrets below the sand which contains vitrified matter, which basically is a type of glass that was created from sand that was molten by extremely high temperatures, similar to the artificial matter that was found in the Nevada desert where the US military tested its first (in modern history) nuclear bombs after which the composition of the earth atmosphere - notably spikes of the amount of Krypton and Xenon - besides in increase of other types of radioactive particles. Archeological discoveries in addition suggest that the vegetation and climate of desert areas once was very different from what they are today. It indicates that tremendously powerful events may at one point in time have had great impact on what currently are the desert landscapes. Robert Oppenheimer - nicknamed the 'father of the atom bomb' - quoted the Bhagavad Gita: 'I am become the destroyer of worlds.' where details of an event were described that seem eerily similar to that of a nuclear attack.
This obviously is a work in progress (as of July 14 2021). I have in mind many details that will later be incorporated in the drawing. The original drawing is 6 times larger than the image posted here - 183 x 103 centimeters, showing much more detail. The oldest stage is at the bottom of this blog entry, the newer once above that. Click on one of the images below to see them in Google's Lightbox, that allows you to scroll through the images, using the scroll wheel of the mouse.
Below the stages I placed some supporting files, all of which are 100% vector drawings, created in Affinity Designer. Some are embedded into the main drawing, others are copied, since embedding at times gives strange results.
Update July 27 and explanation of some technical details
At this point my computer is barely capable of rendering the image. Although I consider it still to be a work on progress, I feel I am forced to put this drawing aside for the time being, while I am looking for options to render the drawing at a reasonable pace. Bear in mind it still is a work in progress and that many effects were achieved by duplicating layers on top of each other, applying different filters, effects, gradient fills and gradient transparencies to them (to fills as well as to strokes of complex varying thickness). Also multilevel clipping of layers was done (clipping one curve into an other in many levels), duplicating them too, while various filters and effects were applied to them. Once I've sorted out and applied the best way to overcome the slow rendering (which probably means buying an entirely new rig or addition of a proficient GPU to my current machine), the entire drawing will be drawn in vectors to enable rescaling to any desired size without loss of quality and preservation of detail, this of course for a specific purpose that I'm currently not inclined to divulge.
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| Stage 10 July 27 2021 - UFOs, desert flower & tweaks |
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| Stage 9 July 23 2021 - foreground detailing |
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| Stage 8 July 22 2021 - Guard & girl's hair adjustment |
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| Stage 7 July 18 2021 - experiment with background |
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| Stage 6 July 17 2021 |
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| Stage 5 July 16 2021 |
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| Stage 4 July 16 2021 |
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| Stage 3 July 15 2021 |
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| Stage 2 July 14 2021 |
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| Stage 1 July 14 2021 |
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Embedded Supporting Vector Drawings
Ultimately all parts of this drawing will be hand drawn in vectors. But as mentioned before, my computer is not up to the task at this point (July 2021). Once this issue is fixed much detail will be added to the components. Below you see the vector support drawings that I embedded into the main drawing so far. I have not used vector brushes at all in this image, because they are not real vectors in Affinity Designer. This drawing only contains hand drawn vector curves and strokes. It makes this document infinitely scalable, preserving quality and detail, plus it allows to make changes afterwards with an ease that is impossible to achieve in pixel art work.
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Arabian sword - 100% vector support drawing |
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Saluki, desert hunting dog - 100% vector support drawing |
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Guard - 100% vector support drawing |
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Desert flower - 100% vector support drawing |
