Visual Language Place 1- The Trafford Centre

For the 'Environmental Storytelling' brief, we were to choose 3 places, 1 familiar and 2 new, in which we were to draw the inside or the outside, taking into consideration the colour, tone, architecture, and mood of the places and then draw at least 5 images for them trying to illustrate all of these elements. I chose to start off with my familiar place to gently jump into this brief, and I chose one of my favourite places; The Trafford Centre. 

I feel that The Trafford Centre embodies a place where anyone of any age can visit and still find something that entices them, whether it be clothes, food or appreciating the interior of the place. Personally, I think The Trafford Centre is one of the best shopping malls in the UK, due to its elegant and antique architecture. Literally, ALL the floors are marble, and everything is for lack of a better word 'shiny' and attractive. I also find that The Trafford Centre is a really colourful place, from the contents of the shops, to the actual fashions of the people that go there. Everywhere you look there is something interesting going on.

I started off with just doing really quick sketches in thumbnails when I was at the Trafford Centre, and I did them really quickly because it was extremely packed due to it being just after Christmas. I also wanted to thumbnail so I could decide which would be better, portrait or landscape and to see how I use choose the composition of my drawings.

Quick thumbnails

I then went back and did larger drawings using my notes to try and capture the essence of the place and also experiment with different styles and materials.

I first started off with drawing the outside of the building, and one aspect of the entire building that I really liked was one of the roofs that was transparent, like a Skylight. I think the ceilings in The Trafford Centre really make the atmosphere of the place. Since they are all Skylights, either the sun shines really bright in lighting up the place, or if you're shopping at night and there is a lot of low lighting, the area just feels really atmospheric, and a really nice place to be. Therefore I didn't want to just use pen or pencil to illustrate this area of The Trafford Centre, I wanted to use colour, but be able to show the transparency of the roof. I loved playing around with the shadows and the depth of the colours in order to make the drawing vibrant. I think I got the vibrancy but down to encapsulate this aspect of the place in general.

                                        

I then drew the building from the side as I was entering and noticed just how big the place really is. When stood beside it from the outside, you really feel quite small and feel the opposite of vertigo. I thought this was going to be really tricky to draw, so I stuck to pencil so that i could focus on depth and perspective which was easy to rub out when I made mistake seen as how perspective is quite hard for me to perfect. I think I got again, the depth bit down and hopefully embodied the how big of the surface area, the place is.

I then decided to draw from inside the building, even though the outside is much more interesting, the other places I had on my list to visit for the rest of the brief, were mainly outdoors based, so I really needed to draw some pieces from indoors. I have seen many drawings/illustrations just done in pen and fine liner and I really liked the end result. Therefore I thought I would try it out here. Again, The Trafford Centre has brilliant architecture, it is constructed at so many different angles which were really hard to draw, so for me this was a challenge, especially since I didn't want to have any pencil or etching to shade as this wasn't the look I was going for. I think this piece went okay, but it was really interesting to draw from a perspective that I wouldn't usually take and force myself to use only a certain medium and go outside of my comfort zone.

I then went back to colour, because when I entered this dressing room, it was SO vibrant and colourful, I didn't think watercolour would even capture it, so I chose pencil crayons again. I love how the pink contrasts with the brown and I feel like the image kind of makes you feel like you are in the centre of the room, and everything is completely surrounding you, which I really like. I also love the vibrancy of this piece and to improve I feel like I should have added more detail to make the room look a bit more interesting than it actually is.

I lastly did one last drawing in digital because I felt like I experimented with quite a few mediums here, but I wanted to try and see how a line drawing could work here also. I really like the way it turned out however I don't feel like it captures any essence of The Trafford Centre, and therefore I think I will stay away from this style for my other places. It looks really clean cut and sharp, but it doesn't capture the vibrancy of how I think this area really is, which I think colour does really well.