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I love the overall style, but as a realist I gotta say that nobody would build streets with upcurved sides like that--especially in a city, where space is always at a premium--because over half the width of the street is wasted space that's too steep to walk/ride/build on. And the narrow walkway between the bridge supports would be a serious bottleneck.
Buildings are the visible side of a city, but in effect they're just the packaging for the REAL city--people, commerce, and defense, all of which need a vast and complex network of transport and access. Roads, streets, rivers, canals, sewers that don't drain into the streets if possible, all big enough to handle the busiest hours and largest loads of food and supplies needed for the life and health of all those people and their animals every day, all year round. And then there's fairs, parades, riots and riot squads, coronations or inaugurations, a sudden influx of panicked people from neighboring towns when enemies invade; EVERYTHING.
But nobody teaches us this sorta thing in art school, so there's nothing we can do but pick it up as we go along. Practical realism, or whatever we want to call it, takes years of being a sponge for little details of how things WORK--not the precise technical details of, say, bridgebuilding (yawwwwwn!), but learning to be a sponge for the fascinating basics of WHY people make things one way rather than another
I've seen damn good artists here on DevArt who'd just never had reason to think about why an arrow's fletching angles BACK from the shaft rather than FORWARD (which would slow the arrow down); why a realistic sword needs a hilt wide and textured enough (and preferably with a pommel) so it wouldn't just slip out of the guy's hand in battle; why your monastery wouldn't put the laundry lines right next to the dovecote/pigeon house (SPLAT on the sheets!); why your hillside farm would plant rows ALONG the hill rather than up-and-down it (to prevent erosion and, in dry terrain, hold the rain a little longer so it has more time to sink into the dry earth).
Me, I like museums and basic archaeology because they're great at WHY.
--Nonie
Buildings are the visible side of a city, but in effect they're just the packaging for the REAL city--people, commerce, and defense, all of which need a vast and complex network of transport and access. Roads, streets, rivers, canals, sewers that don't drain into the streets if possible, all big enough to handle the busiest hours and largest loads of food and supplies needed for the life and health of all those people and their animals every day, all year round. And then there's fairs, parades, riots and riot squads, coronations or inaugurations, a sudden influx of panicked people from neighboring towns when enemies invade; EVERYTHING.
But nobody teaches us this sorta thing in art school, so there's nothing we can do but pick it up as we go along. Practical realism, or whatever we want to call it, takes years of being a sponge for little details of how things WORK--not the precise technical details of, say, bridgebuilding (yawwwwwn!), but learning to be a sponge for the fascinating basics of WHY people make things one way rather than another
I've seen damn good artists here on DevArt who'd just never had reason to think about why an arrow's fletching angles BACK from the shaft rather than FORWARD (which would slow the arrow down); why a realistic sword needs a hilt wide and textured enough (and preferably with a pommel) so it wouldn't just slip out of the guy's hand in battle; why your monastery wouldn't put the laundry lines right next to the dovecote/pigeon house (SPLAT on the sheets!); why your hillside farm would plant rows ALONG the hill rather than up-and-down it (to prevent erosion and, in dry terrain, hold the rain a little longer so it has more time to sink into the dry earth).
Me, I like museums and basic archaeology because they're great at WHY.
--Nonie