[15+] Move Off The Bench

WARNING

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT IS INTENDED FOR OLDER AUDIENCES, VIEW AND SHARE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

After watching some videos, I decided it was time to return the use of prompts. I found a random word generator and what I got was 'Bench'.

This instantly brought about memories of my drama class, which had done a couple of tasks which centered around a bench. One of them was a performance for an awards ceremony (of which I could have participated in but regret not doing) and the other was an improvisation exercise. The latter of which I shall discuss.

Set something up for use a bench and then you begin. One actor will sit on the bench and the task of the other actor is to persuade them to get off the bench so they can have it all to themselves. This is supposed to encourage the actor to come up quickly with a unique resolve to the problem, each time an actor doing trying their own scheme.

Our teacher was on the bench, just sat on one end as she waited for the next competition. And this particular actor (a good sport for putting up with the humor directed towards him afterwards) decided to get the teacher to move by 'playing with himself', not for real I should add! Naturally the teacher got off the bench straight away, surprised and amused. After that the exercise continued in a more child friendly light.

I suppose those witnesses will have forgotten about that and may be remembering now, but it's one of those memories I did not forget. And so to be nostalgic, I apologize to that individual as I make another poke at this memory, this time with an illustration!

Unlike most of my content, I worked on this masterpiece in a different book, made of acrylic paper which is better at withstanding watercolours than my Derwent sketch book. I used a combination of Derwent's water colour pencils and Crayola's water colour pencils and tried to stick to a minimalistic colour scheme. The colours used in the end were blue, green, greyscales, browns. Granted I used more than five specific colours but kept them in that range to prevent the piece looking too busy.

I aimed for a simpler and more geometric art style (showing better through the scenery and props) which I think I will continue to use as it suits me, I think it comes across as orderly. I just need to spend some time making sure I can make the people and other characters match this style.

Some of you may notice a little influence from Kasey Golden the YouTube artist. Yes she is the one  to thank for leading me to this. I'm sure next time I try something like this however that it will be for a more universal audience, of which I think she as well as many of you would be happy about.

Here you can see the sketches done in my usual book in preparation for the official masterpiece. I started off with the most important element, the bench. I drew a couple from memory, one of a bench I used to have outside my house and another from a park I used to go to. After that I looked at some benches on Google Images and found the perfect bench for the style I was drawing in.

After that I started focusing on the character designs and poses. I knew I wanted the male to be facing away and up to his business, so he was simple. As for the female, it took me a few sketches to decide just how she would be reacting to this public indecency. I admit that the female's feet were proving a difficulty for me so I decided to cheat a bit and put a bag in front of her feet, it did fit with the sort of character I was trying to portray.

And lastly an important element was some of the background detail, of which I sketched the trees. Did you notice? One happens to be shaped similarly to a particular part of the male body. Then the bushes in the foreground happen to be a similar shape to a cell often connected with that part of the male body. And if you didn't know that already, sorry for spoiling the surprise.

And now for anyone who does have children, I have something they may like to see coming Monday with my next addition to the Alphabet Challenge. Be sure to check it out as well as the seventeen other entries! That's it for now, until the next time.