Greetings from - Rio De Janeiro and Kamukura

I spent some time considering the next 2 postcards that I wanted to do, I considered stonehenge and the sphinx from Egypt for some time, I also thought about easter island. I started researching more famous landmarks on the internet and looking for ones with prominent faces as the other 2 postcards featured faces I felt like i should carry on with that as a theme. 

After a while I picked out Christ the Redeemer from Rio De Janeiro as it is a memorable statue but is not always referred to as the statue of liberty despite some of its similarities. 

I decided to think about the background first in this one, after looking at the other two I knew I wanted a dark blue background or at least blue shades. However i found it was really hard to draw the redeemer on top of it. So after deliberating I deleted the background and started from scratch. 

I kept the picture as a reference to look back on, but I didn't want to keep to the same colour scheme. I wanted to mix it up. I really struggled with the symmetrical aspect of this statue and in the end I had to draw out the shapes on paper before I could get my head around how to do it on illustrator. I started off with blue teal tones for his skin and hair as I wanted it to look a little different to the original statue, however I decided against it after I had drawn it all out. I felt that it gave off too many zombie vibes and it wasn't what I was aiming for in my piece. 

 
 It was at this point I had to go back to research, I tried giving the redeemer "rock on" hands but it felt false and not true to it's origin, so I went back and did some research on the actual place. I found out that Rio De Janiro is quite a big tourist location but it also has one of the highest crime rates. The crimes normally contain drug deals but i didn't want to incude actual drugs in the drawing. Then I started reading about gang culture and looking into different weapons they used.

It was from here that I decided that gang culture and guns might be able to influence the drawing so I looked up some of them and applied them to my work.
I kept the orangey hues as they went very well with my teal background.

"Stranger, whosoever thou art and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages. This is the Temple of Bhudda (sic) and the gate of the eternal, and should therefore be entered with reverence."