SYTYCD: Final!

This was the final So You Think You Can Draw assignment, to make a CD with the other SYTYCD assignments burned onto it along with designing a cover for the CD. I did mine entirely on photoshop with text, gradient, & brushes. I though the quote was appropriate for this class especially.

Kitchen Boards

A comparison board on our kitchen project that goes into more detail of the design with axon views, plan views, section cuts, cabinet elevations, & exploded cabinetry. This was an exercise in laying a board out to fit your concept.

Customize Your Island... Like a Puzzled City!

For the 12"x12" So You Think You Can('t) Draw, we had to do our custom piece in our studio kitchen as a focal point among the context of the kitchen. I fully rendered this so I could also use it for my board.

My greatest worry was about how dark the cabinetry is, but I think with the light walls and floors it looks just fine.

4 Materials-3 Mediums

Using four of our materials from our Studio kitchen project we had to create a composition of twelve 4"x4" squares zooming in on the materials and rendering them in pencil, pen, and marker. I think I was most successful when I was far away from the material details rather then zoomed in.

Materials: Quartz Caeaser Stone, 3Form Graphic, Durapalm Plywood End Grain, & Stainless Steel Backsplash.

The Man of Steel in His Kitchen

A logo design for our Studio kitchen project and yet another SYTYCD prompt. I did this solely on the computer rather than using traditional mediums I am familiar with (i.e: Watercolors). Did all the line work in the first one in Illustrator using my tablet to help me position lines and lettering and then rendered (example being the bottom design) in Photoshop via graphic tablet so I had better accuracy.

I ended up going with the line work one rather than the colored one because I thought it looked overdone and lost it's statement amongst the color. The reason for the lettering "Man in his city" is because I needed something to help identify the client that I was designing this city-like kitchen for. My client being Shaquille O'Neal has a nickname of "The Man of Steel" on the basketball court and so I played with the superman idea and Shaq having reign over his kitchen like a superhero has his own home city to defend.

Make a composition... The SIZE of a CITY!

The object was to create an 11 x 17 composition using Photoshop or Illustrator of our concept with precedent pictures and abstractions. My client in Shaquille O'Neal and my concept is city, most specifically the city of Miami pictured in the composition above. The two drawings at the bottom represent the abstractions of the city skyline and the city grid, two elements I am incorporating into my own kitchen. The look alittle washed out, but thats how I wanted them since cities tend to be hazy themselves.

My linking graphic element is the white line running in various levels of the page that is also an element of the city skyline in order to bring your eye around the page.

Axons

Here is the better of the two axon rendered drawings, done in various pencils from an original floor plan from before.

SYTYCD: WIN!

So the last So You Think You Can Draw was al about scale figures in composition. I chose to do them in the space of Studio since I am always there doing some sort of project. In the first one I colored the scale figures with the background, in the second I colored the background and not the scale figures, and in the last I did a loose rendering technique with simpler scale figures in it.

Elevation Views

Using the investigation skills we used in designing the section view, I picked Elevation View "A" and added some more furnishings to it. This is the rough copy because I did not scan the nice rendered ones before they were taken up on Thursday. The finals are rendered in various techniques and have entourage in them.

Detective Work in a Section

With the information on where the structure was cut, we as students had to visualize how the space would look since all we had to work with was the plan we had just rendered. This is how I envisioned the space with its half size interior walls and 3 foot step down into the living area.

Rendered Floor Plans

Experimenting with different colors and rendering techniques, here is a plan view that I thought was the most successful out of the three I worked on. I worked hard on the shadowing and learned that there is a way to overdo a rendering. I shall work hard to tone it down but still keep a good level of drawing/rendering.

Composition: Inspiration to Rendering

I'm learning alot in photoshop, I never knew you could assemble anything like this in photoshop so this was a learning experience for me. Practicing the use of setting guidelines, snapping images into place and the line and text tools I created this simple looking composition.

I can definitely see myself doing more presentations like this one rather than just pasting things together on a piece of matte board. I think it is cleaner this way.

What I learned:
+To pay attention to hierarchy when it comes to creating a composition with images.

Gothic Castles and Dragon Siege...

My composition for the castle So You Think You Can['t] Draw contest of the week. This subject matter is right up my alley because I really have interest in castles and fantasy. My inspiration for the design of my castle was from that of the Gothic Cathedrals because I think they are very elegant and detailed and I wanted to bring that to my castle.

There are alot of small details in this composition, everything from a knight thats frozen solid to silhouettes of dragons in the sunset. Check them out!

Tone it down abit...

Using the de-saturation option on Photoshop. I've been told my colors are usually very saturated and even over saturated so I removed the red that was so apparent in all the other postings. Does it make a difference?

Whats That? You Don't Like the Green?

Well no problem, lets change it to blue. I used the color balance option this time under image and adjustments. Based on a few colors like cyan, blue, green, etc. I could create a color mixture that could be infinite. I only changed a few things in this room so I could have a primary color scheme.

[Burn] Baby Burn...

Okay, so we learned some Photoshop magic the other day and here is what the Burn Tool can do. From the last post, I used my perspective I scanned in and I decided to make shadow more apparent in the image. I may have gone overboard in some spots but thats the point as I see just how dark I can go and still keep the composition interesting and not muddled.

Final Rendering

Here is another view of the previous space assigned in drawing class. I had to go back into Sketch-up and fool around with the eye level views and walk around tool to get a decent and interesting camera angle of the living area.

Still brightly saturated colors but I worked alittle more on light and shadow by using cool grays to darken some areas. Also I created my own scale figure rather than using "sketch-up man".

[Caution]: Experimental Rendering

Rendering has to be my absolute favorite part of this class, I love drafting and all but this is the most fun for me because I am an artist at heart. For this assignment we had to render based on the color scheme from one of Maud Gatewood's paintings, anyone see a trend?

Maud Gatewood

We had to experiment in rendering styles from rigid to loose techniques using markers. (In my case Prismas) My weakness seems to be letting loose, for some reason if its not pretty uniform I see it as sloppy so I shall continue to work on that. Also my colors are abit brighter than the norm but I decided thats what I wanted to go for to show contrast and shape in the space and practice color placement.

Structured Rendering

Medium Rendering

Loose Rendering II

Loose Rendering I

There are two "loose" renderings because I was experimenting with different techniques and with getting used to being alittle looser as I tried things that worked and did not work to show the time I had put into them rather than make it seem like they took ten minutes. Markers are still a relatively scary medium for me because they are so much more permanent in every mark you make but I am getting more and more comfortable with them as I experiment.

Things to work on:
+Color Saturations
+Shadowing that translates from afar.
+ Loose Style for future reference.
+ Techniques with various shades of gray markers.

Sketch-Up Drafting!

Using the floor plan of the previous drafting assignment my assignment was to go digital and recreate the design of my room perspectives and floor plan in sketch-up. Having little experience with this program it tested my computer skills and made for more than a couple hours of work overall. (With the sudden deleting of sections to the fact that my walls did not like to meet up)

Here are the four views:



In the end I feel rather accomplished with all this, I made all my own windows and furniture without uploading from Google Warehouse as a short cut. I can now say Sketch-up is something I look forward to continue working with. :)

The Final Production...

To give a visual idea, this is the spot I was alluding to that my sculpture would be occupying, this isn't an image in full traffic but area wise you can see what I mean with all the concrete walks converging. It has ample space for my design.


Here is the final design after deciding my concept was "pinwheel". The basic large triangle forms still exist with some extension to them to make a continuation of the round about idea while still being directional. Plus they add to the visual movement and shadow presence that the model exudes.

Program Parameters:
+ Largest Triangles are 12 feet in reality.
+Smaller Triangles are 6 feet.
+The form is made of concrete to cut back on heat it may have being all made of a metal, and the concrete is 6" thick.
+The inner sides of the structure are covered in an aluminum coating to create more contrast and to reflect things around them and light even on the most cloudy day. [Like a pinwheel!]

The final idea for how college students can interact with it is that it is a meeting place where people who are not in a rush can stand under of against and will be protected from on coming and outgoing people traffic from the dorms, Cafeteria, and EUC Student Center while still being visually aware of their surroundings.

Here are some more angles:



Having had critique on my design I have learned the following things to consider:
+ Aural qualities it may have. [i.e. what would it sound like on a windy day.]
+ When model making, simulate thickness in materials in more areas than just in the drawings.
+ Drawings need to simulate more shadows to give the viewer more of a sense of things.

A Title for Second Year...

I worked on a couple of design ideas for the title bar of our second year blog but all of them seemed to not turn out how I wanted. So instead I did this green and orange design attempting to compose the entire 3"x10" paper in an interesting way using green, orange, and black while also using linear and circular shapes.

A plan + 2 perspectives

Things due for Tuesday the 8th of September:

Perspective looking at the south wall of my space.

Floor plan of my space with labels on the skylight and other fixtures that are in need of information.

Perspective looking to the north wall of my space.

[Models] Literal to Abstract

In exploring the 3D aspect of my drawings I began with a very literal interpritation of the painting itself. I knew what I wanted to occur interaction wise with the structure and who would be interacting in it but the form it would take alluded me.


As seen a above, it is easy to believe that I was very much influenced by the focal point of the painting, the illuminated lattice screen form, my two were attempts at creating a form that was literal in order to gain more inspiration for the 3D affair. The concept of EDGE was thrown around but really whenever I tried to explain it I came up with contrast, which was one of the main elements I wanted to take into the painting.





Though I did not want to be literal in the least, this third image was one of my best designs and it was actually the one to help me come up with my concept. Not contrast, because its not a concept at all, but the idea of pinwheel and how the structure can use movement without really moving at all.

Urban Interactive Sculpture

Time to get the mind into gear, we have been studio deprived for a couple months during the summer break and our professors thought it would be beneficial to begin with a project thought provoking like that of our past projects to get us ready for the Nutrition Lab design project. Create an urban sculpture that can be placed in UNCG's campus and can be interactive for what every group of people you chose to cater to: [Also this must be inspired by one of the many paintings by the amazing Maud Gatewood herself from whom our building is named after.]

Here is my painting:

Maud Gatewood worked alot with both colors and shapes from everyday living to landscape, of the many more colorful and engaging pictures I chose this specific one because of the contrast between light and shadow. The painting is about 90% darkness and 10% light which is shown from behind a lattice like screen, giving the painting an almost ominous or anxious tone when really examined. I wanted to take this stark contrast of light and dark being manipulated and tweak it into my own design.

My Place: The concrete walk between the fountain area and the Quad dorms for upperclassmen.
My People: Freshmen-Senior classes, basically any student living on campus since the concrete walk is a essential pathway to and from the side of campus where classes are and dorms on the latter side.
My Thoughts for Interaction: creating a social pass through or gathering and perhaps creating an area for seating.

Main thoughts on my mind were being able to create a structure that would permit a place for people to meet and maybe even chat between classes or going to their dorms to study. I wanted the structure to

I was told to think in terms of lines in the painting for inspiration.
Think about voids in space in the painting.
To think beyond the colors in front of your face.

Sketches while thinking about these terms:



The what was our next design in the process to 3D design of models.

Its a [Joint] Effort to [Plan] Ahead...

After working the perspective from last week we were commissioned to make a plan view of that same room showing the north side of the room as well as a study area complete with chair, desk, and bookshelf. We also had to indicate lighting in the room.


Due today as well is the "Joint" subject assigned for the weekly competition: So You Think You Can Draw? I decided to observe an object that could be a joint or connection in studio and quickly picked my trusty old desk lamp with it's interesting joints and connections that hold it to the desk and swivel it around to preferred angles. The technique used is a combination of cross hatching and hatching to show hierarchy in the image and to show light and dark points.


Enjoy!

Egyptians and Minonians

First installment of History and Theory of Design II, we are starting again from the beginning architects of ancient Egypt and Minoan Greece. Beginning with the Egyptians we talked about the interiors of their temples and how light played a part in the interior space. The first example used being the Hypostyle Hall: Temple of Amon in Karnak, Egypt 13000 B.C. This hall was open aired, the interior was lined and decorated with columns and carvings, and the light was filtered into the interior through various hierarchy of columns that made rows and rows within the temple.


One of the major things that intrigued me about the structure was how similar the light was filtered in from the top clerestory to that of the Gothic cathedrals. This shows me how my favorite style period was influenced by the ancient Egyptians with their stone grates that filtered light in from high places in the temple.

Carvings within the temple were symbolistic to the gods the Egyptian culture worshiped and were responsible for telling stories about the ancient days and about the Pharaoh who may have commissioned the structure.

Basically the elements of the Egyptian temple we observed were the monumental scale from people to structure, axial progression of the interior space, carvings (narratives) into the story of the culture, & timeless materials in that the stones are still standing even today in all the glory that was Egypt in 13000 B.C.


The second culture used in class Thursday was the Minoans in Greece. We went from one climate of deserts to a climate on an island in the Mediterranean sea. The Minoans were a peaceful culture and this air of peace translated into their architecture as well as their interiors since they were pretty much open to the world. The Knossos Palace is an example of this peaceful idea in that it is not a guarded palace because the people did not fear attack in such a peaceful time. This type was multi functional in that it was a palace, a storehouse, a public space, and a private space all in one. Columns where used throughout the structure and interiors and were decorated with reds and blacks rather than just carved into lotuses at the capitals like the Egyptians.

Light was far more of an important factor and there was much more of it demonstrated in Minoan design with opened roof areas and window forms. Hierarchy is not very prominent in this design either, rather the frescoes become more elaborate. Frescoes tell a story of the culture and the myths that accompanied it, such as that of the Minotaur.

So in comparison between the two cultures:
[Picture here]

[Visualizing] a Name

You wouldn't think something like a name tag would be so tedious to do but apparently it is were Interior Architecture is concerned...

Just to get back into the swing of lettering, make a name tag for your new desk space using techniques from Drawing and Designing with Confidence. Play with various ink pens and markers to overlay your penciled lettering.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do, so in the end I had two finals.

This last rendition is my final name tag, while I really liked the way my name turned out in the first name tag it was alittle sloppy for my taste and did not show that I knew how to do proper architectural lettering. [Which was a big part of the assignment.] The quote I felt embodied the program I'm in and design in general.