I had fun with an exercise in limits lately. Utilizing a Caran D’Ache Museum blue watercolor pencil and Traveler’s Notebook watercolor paper, I copied a few scenes from some video games that I like as well as some concept art drawings.

The above is a copy of a drawn map of the first age encountered in Myst, it’s a motif I return to often and enjoy. I did another copy of a sketch of a different area from the Myst series below.

I made a couple versions of the piece above, which is a copy of a pencil drawing of concept art for one of the Breath of Fire games. I liked how this village looked very lived-in, I believed every bit of it because of the details in the original drawing. It was fun to map out the roofs and trees. I found it easy to imagine characters moving throughout this environment and making discoveries.

For my last two drawings, I rendered some scenes from Final Fantasy IX. I like these two scenes, which feature an inn (above) and a shop (below) because of their believability factor. There are many decorative and utilitarian objects scattered across both scenes, like framed art and containers, and also loveable elements like splintering floorboards and worn rugs.

While drawing these scenes, I noticed more about these scenes than I ever had before while playing the games. It felt like I got to know every brick and branch personally. I felt like each artist who originally worked on each scene definitely breathed life and atmosphere into each environment. I also had to appreciate the energy that went into each artwork - at some points I admit I gave up on drawing every little thing.

It was cool to work with just one color for these, by limiting myself, I had to pay attention to the content, shapes, and values within each artwork rather than colors. I’ll be sure to continue in this vein with future work.