Boardwalk Showers part 9

Today I got back into the Studio to work on the current block. Getting to the end of the drawing process, which means that I have to deal with a few things I've put off until now, as well as fix some problems with what is already in place. Early in the morning I had looked around the internet for images of bath house Ukiyo-e prints, as well as architectural photos of contemporary Japanese baths, but none of what I found seemed to really apply to what I'm doing. If I look at any additional references, it will be western locker/shower rooms.

The large tiles on the floor seem to be working, but the smaller squarish wall tiles that I had roughed in previously needed a lot of adjustments, and some areas of the walls were still blank. I ended up redrawing almost everything on the walls, and some of the walls as well, making the vertical strips facing outward between shower stalls a little wider to accommodate the square tiles better. My original plan called for these to be slightly wider than the shower vestibule itself, providing a small recessed area (such as where the striped towel is hanging in the top photo), but so far the structure looks a little confusing. I'm going to have to redraw a bit of it, whether it's just fixing the perspective (there are some big scale issues back there) or simplifying the architecture.

I also devoted a little time to some of the figures. In Monday's critique, some participants felt that a few of the figures were not as realistically drawn as they could be, specifically the one in center shower and the standing figure drying her hair. The first is a minor character, and will be further obscured when I cut it for the shower curtain, but for now I made a small adjustment. The latter figure was of more concern because it's a point of focus. The criticism was that upper and lower halves didn't quite match up in a typical posture. This block drawing is a sketch of a copy of a life sketch made from a posing figure, so I figured there may be something to it. I'm not going to bring the model back in, but when I compared my block to the one in my sketchbook I could see some differences with the legs and a few other parts. Brought my block sketch back in line with the original life drawing. Tattoos are starting to be considered as well. One of my models has several, which I plan to scatter around some of the figures she posed for. These include the shoulder on the woman emerging from the shower, and on the shoulder blades of the seated figure. They need cleaning up, but I think they'll stay. Below is a view of the whole block as it looks today.

Over the next few days I plan to deal with those things mentioned above, add a few more details, and then see if it's ready to cut.