Mystery

Last weeks word was mystery and i decided to base my image on something true with a story. I was looking at mysteries and conspiracies. At first I was thinking of doing the babushka woman from the JFK assassination. She was a woman who was witnessed taking photos, specifically pointing the camera at the back of his head. Once he was shot and panic enthralled she stayed calmly taking photos. She was never found and neither were the photos she took. But the i got distracted from that idea with the death of Elisa Lam.

Elisa Lam was last seen alive in this cctv footage of an elevator in the hotel she was staying at. Lam was found after complaints about the water pressure lead to an inspection of the water tanker on the roof. Lam was found naked inside the tanker. No one knows whether this was an act of suicide or whether she was murdered.
I thought this would  a good base for my illustration friday as there are a lot of key elements to this story that I can illustrate.

I used the elevator as the base as it is the most recognisable part of the story. The cctv footage is what people tend to base their theories about her on. I had the number floor going up to 15 because she took the lift to the 15th floor where there was a set of ladders to climb up to the roof hatch. I had her drowning within the lift so that it all worked as one single image and because I'm really into drawing free standing water at the moment.

These are the colours i was deciding between for the water. I like the blue one because it is realistic and complimentary to the doors aqua colour. The green one i like because it also compliments the door colour and it fulfils my love of green. The orange one I liked because it contrasted boldly from the door. I decided I should leave the water colour to decide after I coloured in the girl as some of the colours might clash and I'm basing her colours off what Lam was actually wearing so there was less room to change on that side. The water would have to be adjusted to suit the figure. 

I liked the colours that the orange water made the girls colours. Its a really rich burgundy/red colour on her hoodie and I like that effect but the colours it has made don't compliment the door colours as well as the other one so I opted for the blue. Overall the colours of the blue water are more complimentary. 

Next i was playing with backgrounds, I wanted to use a colour at first but every one i picked seemed to clash in some way or at least wasn't working to the highest potential. I opted for just a plain black background because it couldn't clash with the colours and also to hide the bad tiles i drew beside the lift. They are wonky and make it more obvious that the box of the elevator isn't quite accurate and it actually skews at the top. I kept the tiling in the pool of water poking out though because Rosie told me she thought gave the pool of water perspective and depth.