Downtown Dubai

I just finished my layout for sketch #8 in my sketchbook class, and I absolutely love it. I'd been thinking of doing a layout of some of the highrise buildings in Dubai for a while now, so when I saw this sketch the very first thing I thought was "buildings." This was the most excited I've been while making a layout for a while - it just came so easily and I'm pretty thrilled with how it turned out.

I know it's been a long time since it was considered cool to replicate scenes from your photos in the layout, but I figured, hey... whatever. I love it! Even if I'm the only one :) Looking back at my older layouts (like YEARS older), some of my favorite layouts are still the ones with scenes. Maybe I'll get crazy and do some more of them. lol.

Dubai is one of the coolest places I've ever been... it's a definite contender for favorite stop on my trip last spring. We spent a lot of time visiting businesses, but doing that gave us a chance to be in among all these amazing sky scrapers and really see them up close. The architecture there was just mind blowing. I just picked a few of the many pictures I took to share on this layout.

The idea for me to do the buildings was easy to follow through on. I found a picture of the Dubai skyline and used Photoshop to pull out the sillhouettes of four of the buildings and blow them up. I printed them out on 12x12 paper and used them as templates. Once I got the buildings and photos down, I realized it just looked plain. But I didn't want to cover it with fru fru stuff, you know? I started thinking of the chapter on background stamps in my stamping workshop and thought I could maybe do a subtle tone-on-tone pattern. I looked over at my stamps and saw my big Hero Arts city skyline stamp and it all fell together. Don't you just love it when that happens?

I filled in some spots that needed a bit more with a bunch of stamps from various Studio Calico sets and then added just a few embellishments to make it feel complete. I love the modern, graphic feel - it works great with all those incredibly modern buildings.

And now, I even have a little time to start another project!

Comments

[Mariangeles_Spain]

It looks great!! :)