I began work on Figure Drawing Garden during the 2020 lockdown. The initial idea was to build a very simple tool for myself to practice figure drawing at home. It would consist of a simple flat plane in Unity with a couple of statues, equally spaced apart, which I could walk around and draw.
However, after placing a statue or two, I found myself getting distracted before I even began drawing. I started tweaking the lighting, adding fog, and incorporating leaves blowing in the wind. Each time I planned to use the tool for its original purpose, I would think of something new to add. To make the garden more engaging, I decided to have the statues spawn randomly.
I created a spawner object that would first select a random stand, then spawn a random statue on it, oriented in a random direction. This small variation made the experience more enjoyable, and I found myself spending more time drawing. This simple method of generating random variation later became the foundation for generating the entire garden.
Photo credit: Imaginibus / Garlands in Paris
The look and feel of the garden were inspired by two places I had visited the previous year while living in Paris. The first was the Louvre's sculpture gardens - Cour Puget and Cour Marly - my favorite places to draw.
The second inspiration came from the gardens at Versailles, particularly the eerie solitude I experienced there during a sudden thunderstorm. As almost everyone rushed back to the palace, classical music continued to play from hidden speakers, blending with the booming thunder. After the storm passed, the garden was nearly empty, leaving me alone with the statues and the music. This experience was what I wanted to recreate with Figure Drawing Garden.
Photo Credit: Stacy's Books