Project Four: Fitting your elements to your composite drawing

One thing we can see from the original painting, there is a lot of "front space," dead empty space comprising the street probably arranged that way so cars or other action can be depicted in front of the police station.

That is the purpose of backgrounding, to lay out the terrain for your action.  Backgrounds don't necessarily form beautifully composed pictures.  They're "working pictures," they have a job to do and being pretty is not always one of them.

Here I've arranged my blue pencil elements to form my composite rough:

...one blue pencil element per layer.

You'll note that everything appears transparent and obviously leaving it this way would be too confusing to paint.  So we erase those parts from each layer we don't need, giving us this:

Additionally, I've put some curve to the curb!!  ... to create a bit of an eye path so the straight edges don't seem too bland.  The perspective isn't perfect but it never is.

So now we paint.  Stay tuned.