Digital Painting- Thumbnails

Here are the thumbnail exercises, featuring 3 of Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'. 

The exercise had us observing more of the visual mentions of the quotes, though some of the designs however, I'd only chosen one or two of these characteristics to work from.

Additionally, the extracts around the more psychological observations of the inhabitants, I feel, can also speak volumes about the place itself. The two tend to work hand in hand.

I plan to take the latter more into account for the next group of thumbnails. 

Baucis [Using brush tool]

"The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders... Nothing of the city touches the ground except those long flamingo legs on which it rests, and, when the days are sunny, a pierced angular shadow that falls on the foliage.

There are thee hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed...".

Esmeralda [with selected tools- lasso, marque and transform]

"In Esmeralda, city of water, a network of canals and a network of streets span and intersect each other. To go from one place to another, you have always the choice between land and boat: and since the shortest distance between two points in Esmeralda is not a straight line but a zigzag that ramifies in tortuous optional routes".

Octavia [Mixer brush, and Lasso Tool]

"The spider-web city... there is a precipice between two steep mountains; the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below, there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; father down you can glimpse the chasm's bed".