Environmental Storytelling - A Costa's in 5 Drawings

In my thumbnail sketches for the Costa environment I became very interested in the whole over-priced consumerism aspect so my first environment sketch really demonstrated this;

 I did a perspective sketch of the exterior to the coffee shop, changing the name to "costly". I used water colours to render it, creating quite a warm, welcoming feel, that the cafe has to persuade you to come in and purchase from it.

I then also did a digital block colour render of the shop.

I further expanded on this aspect with a rather fairytale like drawing;

 

I went for an alice in wonderland aesthetic, using watercolours in a sort of fantasy dystopian manner to create quite an old fashioned , grotesque look. I was inspired by the illustrator Conrad Roset and his fantasy drawings;

Where he captures this fantasy feel with blotchy watercolours, which create a dream-like dystopian state which is perfect for my environment sketch, where I want to get across the element of persuasion to purchase products in mass chain cafes.

Inspired by the strong aroma of coffee that sticks on your clothes for hours after, I decided to use coffee as a medium to draw my setting. Coffee was very difficult to paint with but it turn has created some great vintage effects. You can imagine some people sat drinking at the tables with steam gently simmering off the cups of tea and coffee;

Inspired by the hot chocolate sat infront of me that I did thumbnail sketches of, I had images of this world where the trees are made of coffee beans, the river made of hot chocolate with marshmellows flowing throughout it and cream froth at the side, so this made up another one of my sketches;

I used bright colours to enhance this fantasy element, like its all one dystopian dream (which it is) I used a mixture of gouache and acrylic with some coffee on the coffee bean trees to make them dark in tone. With this sketch you can imagine some fantastical character flying down the hot chocolate river, covered in cream foam.

In my last environment sketch I was inspired by my thumbnail sketches of my empty hot chocolate glass and costa cups from my friend. It is a simple one, inspired by the illustrator Rebecca Clarke and the way she applies colour;

quite a colourful, simplistic background, meaning it would most likely fit with a greyscale character as contrast, or a thin stick-man type 2D character, who is miniture and causing havoc amongst the cups, sliding down the spoons, bathing in the cups etc.

However I wasn't fully happy and decided to experiment with another media to represent this background;

Here I used charcoal spread all over the page, then with an eraser I rubbed out the 2 cups, which creates this silent era, flickery, distorted feel which I love, it has lots of texture and life.. Quite contradicting considering its so black and bleak.