Greetings from - Kamukura and Rio De Janiero

 For the last two postcards I spent quite some time thinking about what I wanted them to be. I did consider doing Easter Island and Stonehenge for quite some time. For the third postcard I decided on "the great buddha" from Kamukura Japan.

I spent some time researching it and looking into it's surroundings before I started. People often visit the buddha but it is often graffitied and has been rebuilt and renewed various times. It has always stood by itself, as its predecessors were washed away or destroyed. As it is still visited today but urbanised/graffitied by youth I decided to give it an iPod to show that it is keeping up with the times in it's own way. 

The making of this postcard was a lot faster and easier than the others so there aren't as many development screenshots. I already knew I wanted the statue in green shades and the background a darker red. 

I struggled creating petals for the trees but in the end resolved to copy and pasting the current ones I had made as individual ones were taking too long, even with the pen tools help. 

 I was pleased with the end result for this one and would probably not change anything apart from perhaps having some more petals. This is my favourite out of the 4 just because I think the colours compliment each other the best. 

For my last postcard I eventually decided on Christ the Redeemer statue which is situated in Rio De Janiero Brazil. Again I researched before I started, mostly because I knew very little about the statue and the city. 

After reading that Rio had many gangs and a strong gang culture as well as strong Christian/catholic beliefs I decided to make the statue a modern twist. 

My initial drawing for christ the redeemer was the most helpful as I struggled for quite some time trying to get the shape of his robes right. 

Once I had got them right, I wrestled with the colour scheme. I didn't want to use green again or purple as I had already used them in the other postcards. 

I tried blue but it gave the statue a slightly zombie-esque feel to it and I didn't want that. 

After a long trial and error period, I finally got a sandstone colour I liked. I also changed the statue in the process from doing a "rock on" pose to holding a set of guns. This came from the idea of gang culture in Rio. I chose yellow as it suited the colour scheme at the time. 

I chose out a teal background which complimented the robes, I added in buildings to show the height difference. 

This is the final, I did like it but I think that if I had more time I would change the scale of things and make the statue and the buildings smaller. It did feel quite squashed into the frame and I think that is something I didn't consider until I had printed them off and realised what it looked like. 

In the future this is something I will try and remember.