Materials used : Derwent Coloursoft colour pencils. Derwent Artists Blending colour pencils. Strathmore paper. Bond paper. Ruler. Pencil (HB)

The location I have chosen for the drawing is located under the escalators leading to the sky walk. I had to come multiple times in order to find the perfect lighting and the hard shadows I wanted for the drawing. I found that the dirty windows made a soft glow when there were intense light striking the surface, and the reflected light off of nearby buildings added a lighter shadow from the other direction.

In order to study the different effects of shadows and lighting, I had the photo edited for a darker more intense feeling, as well as a lighter more whimsical feeling. However, I felt that while a whimsical setting would look nice, it doesn't translate terribly well when it comes to tone variation.

It was rather difficult to use a ruler without a table, so I settled for a rough sketch of the lines on site. It was later refined on a worktable into a perspective drawing.

Disaster struck however, as I realized that my printer would not scan nor print in the paper size I required. However, luckily I had a drawing tablet. So I found a white page on the internet, cranked the brightness as high as the tablet would allow, and used it as a pseudo light table to trace onto dark strathmore paper.

I then outlined the drawing in red. The reason was that I wanted to explore the idea of changing the light properties in order to impart a completely different feeling to the original site.  I thought of all the hellish experiences I had during rush hours at Union Station, and decided to go for a dark red hellish depiction.

It was actually rather difficult to transform the colour properties of the drawing. Using coloured pencils on a red tone would mean that simply using black to shade red into darker reds wasn't feasible or accurate, as it would change the tone of the colour. 

It took a great many number of tries to get the colour mix good enough to represent a dark red shadow (Imperial purple + red + dark fuscia + prussian blue). It was also at this point that I came to the realization that I was drawing on the wrong side of the paper. 

During colour testing, I found that the smooth side of the paper was better suited for the drawing, as it would not leave gaps in the colour from the crevasses between bumps. 

In order to make up for this blunder, I had to press very hard with the dominant colour of sections, in order to smooth out and fill in the blank areas. If there was one thing I would wish for, it would be the fact I should have gotten a broader range of colours for pencils so that I didn't have to mix in four colours to create the colour I needed. And of course, to always double check the paper to make sure its on the correct side !