second drawing: dis(cove)ry?

today I wanted to do another drawing in a similar fashion to how I started doing the last one, so I started off writing a phrase again, this time a little more optimistic, 'i am very much alive'. i just liked the 'very much', like how much 'alive' is 'very much'? anyway, I wash over it with more charcoal like marks and started erasing.

I didn't erase as much this time - instead seeing these animal figures in the marks so I began to emphasise them. I found about ten or so (e.g. the head of a rabbit in the top right, chimp top left, lion beneath the rabbit, a dog near the middle, a crow bottom left, another rabbit near the middle.. etc) when I started covering them up again... I didn't really like how busy the drawing became..

originally I actually traced from that image from the Sunderland museums event archive of these two children with their hands on this alligator, but I removed it. instead, I added a screenshot of the performance by the Taiwanese group based on the event - it looks eerie in the drawing. then I realised that what they're standing on looks like rock/cliffs near the sea, so I emphasised that. I liked how it sort of has a narrative now.

I could've and maybe should have left it at that, but I really wanted to add something at the bottom, and was looking through my materials and found the image that I really wanted to incorporate somewhere, which was when I was coming down an elevator in japan. i don't know, it was just so 'city'. I thought it might give a strange contrast to whats happening here, which seems to be in the past? or another planet.

I traced the escalator bit and added a bit of motion blur to it, and moved it around.. this is the end product (I had to make up some bits but) this is how it looks now, I'm not sure about it?

what I enjoy most about these digital drawings is (ofc, the freedom of moving and removing layers, which comes with challenges too, too many possibilities) the ability to zoom in and pick out details, though it's a shame you cant really see them at first glance, but I don't mind. I drew these in A4 size, but maybe I should go bigger next time.

details ^^^

I think maybe now I wanna try starting off by roughly drawing from a landscape (maybe those abandoned amusement/water parks olive and I were talking about drawing or painting from) and doing the same thing and see what happens.