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Description
EDIT: Now in higher resolution!

Man, it took me forever to finish this piece. Not because it was particularly difficult to do, but because of my general lack of motivation to do it. For me, drawing is a very arduous task, even if I can do it fairly easily. For some reason, it takes a lot for me to just get up the drive to work on a drawing, and it takes me even longer to work up enough energy to actually finish one (for me, this means inking it). Because if I don't feel up to it or I feel like it'll turn out like crap if I try to ink it, then I'll likely mess it up... So yeah, basically, I'm lazy. Really lazy.

So anyway... This drawing. I was inspired by many things to create this piece. For one thing, I had just watched one of Hideo Miyazaki's films, Howl's Moving Castle. All of Miyazaki's films are visually inspiring, but something particular about this film intrigued me on a personal level: the mechanical moving castle. I love stuff like that, so I was inspired to work on a house-like structure with all sorts of fantastic things.

I borrowed some themes from Venice, Italy and the riverways located there. I always thought the way the buildings looked and how the river played such an integral role in their lives was all very interesting, and so I included them here. I sort of made houses out of the valleys and had it so that you had to ride a boat into your house because the entire town was submerged. Everyone's just too lazy to move out of their houses and so they just stay there. If there's a really bad rainstorm one day, they'll all be underwater.

In the middle of the picture, there's a large tree stump (if you can make it out) and a house built on top of it as well as inside the tree stump itself. There's some sort of living establishment in the middle, and as for the bottom, it's a small potion shop (probably a mystical-like pub area where the tennants/visitors can go to eat and drink).

The top is still very mysterious. Not even I know what goes on in there. There is a pale that is being supplied with potion juice coming from the top home, but it is unclear as to what else goes on there. They appear to have at least one guest living on the left side of the house as well as one barrel-shaped fountain that dumps into the harbor and another slide-like fountain that dumps into a hole leading through someone's home. The top half of the house is probably run by the government regulating some sort of irrigation problem in the city, which probably gives them the authority to drive a large hole into somebody's home.

I thought that water was a strong element and I love depicting it whenever I can, so I have it all over the place in this picture. As you can see on the right there is some sort of pump that filters water into a barrel and then squirts it into a large container of some sort. It's probably a company shipping their water to far off lands. The mill in the back seems to power the machinery here, but that's assumed due to the absence of any other source of power. In fact, however, the mill is a historical monument and just for aesthetic purposes. The city is actually self-sustaining in the way it draws power from the water that it mines and irrigates everyday.

Lastly, the bean stalk is just one of this towns' many fruitful attempts to create behemoth produce. In the sky rests thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables and the workers in Zantuland harvest these fruits once every year and hall them back down to town to sell and devour. Since the town is always cloudy, the citizens have to rely on the sun beyond the clouds to give strength to the plants. The water is drawn up through the stalk from the town where water is abundant. Constant rain and thunder dominate this town, yet they'll never go starving... as long as the bean stalk stays connected to the clouds. See, the kicker is, if their beanstalk dies, then the town will as well. The town is totally dependent on their produce, and without a way to access it, there will be no way to sell it to other lands as well as no food for the citizens to keep for themselves. Indeed, this town is a prisoner of their own survival... but in a good way.

This drawing was done in pigment liner on a 6X8 inch pad.

Description
EDIT: Now in higher resolution!

Man, it took me forever to finish this piece. Not because it was particularly difficult to do, but because of my general lack of motivation to do it. For me, drawing is a very arduous task, even if I can do it fairly easily. For some reason, it takes a lot for me to just get up the drive to work on a drawing, and it takes me even longer to work up enough energy to actually finish one (for me, this means inking it). Because if I don't feel up to it or I feel like it'll turn out like crap if I try to ink it, then I'll likely mess it up... So yeah, basically, I'm lazy. Really lazy.

So anyway... This drawing. I was inspired by many things to create this piece. For one thing, I had just watched one of Hideo Miyazaki's films, Howl's Moving Castle. All of Miyazaki's films are visually inspiring, but something particular about this film intrigued me on a personal level: the mechanical moving castle. I love stuff like that, so I was inspired to work on a house-like structure with all sorts of fantastic things.

I borrowed some themes from Venice, Italy and the riverways located there. I always thought the way the buildings looked and how the river played such an integral role in their lives was all very interesting, and so I included them here. I sort of made houses out of the valleys and had it so that you had to ride a boat into your house because the entire town was submerged. Everyone's just too lazy to move out of their houses and so they just stay there. If there's a really bad rainstorm one day, they'll all be underwater.

In the middle of the picture, there's a large tree stump (if you can make it out) and a house built on top of it as well as inside the tree stump itself. There's some sort of living establishment in the middle, and as for the bottom, it's a small potion shop (probably a mystical-like pub area where the tennants/visitors can go to eat and drink).

The top is still very mysterious. Not even I know what goes on in there. There is a pale that is being supplied with potion juice coming from the top home, but it is unclear as to what else goes on there. They appear to have at least one guest living on the left side of the house as well as one barrel-shaped fountain that dumps into the harbor and another slide-like fountain that dumps into a hole leading through someone's home. The top half of the house is probably run by the government regulating some sort of irrigation problem in the city, which probably gives them the authority to drive a large hole into somebody's home.

I thought that water was a strong element and I love depicting it whenever I can, so I have it all over the place in this picture. As you can see on the right there is some sort of pump that filters water into a barrel and then squirts it into a large container of some sort. It's probably a company shipping their water to far off lands. The mill in the back seems to power the machinery here, but that's assumed due to the absence of any other source of power. In fact, however, the mill is a historical monument and just for aesthetic purposes. The city is actually self-sustaining in the way it draws power from the water that it mines and irrigates everyday.

Lastly, the bean stalk is just one of this towns' many fruitful attempts to create behemoth produce. In the sky rests thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables and the workers in Zantuland harvest these fruits once every year and hall them back down to town to sell and devour. Since the town is always cloudy, the citizens have to rely on the sun beyond the clouds to give strength to the plants. The water is drawn up through the stalk from the town where water is abundant. Constant rain and thunder dominate this town, yet they'll never go starving... as long as the bean stalk stays connected to the clouds. See, the kicker is, if their beanstalk dies, then the town will as well. The town is totally dependent on their produce, and without a way to access it, there will be no way to sell it to other lands as well as no food for the citizens to keep for themselves. Indeed, this town is a prisoner of their own survival... but in a good way.

This drawing was done in pigment liner on a 6X8 inch pad.