3rd Year Critiques

When sitting in on the 3rd year critiques it really gave me a chance to see what is to come. How my concepts are put into design learned from drafting class, to make a functional living space.

I was very intrigued by both projects that they had to do with both designing a space for a mental hospital as well as a restaurant/wine bar building that also housed living facilities.

One of the ideas that I really enjoyed for the hospital was the waves concept. I liked how she explained patient process as waves, and they go up and down. They can be soothing, or symbols of hardship, but overall the idea is to conquer them and regain control of one's life again.

The Buddhist Peacock idea was my favorite for 106 Parrish St. Wine Bar/Apartment concept. I liked how theirs felt so much more bright. I am not a fan over dark interiors, and that is what turned me off to most of the others. Theirs seemed so much more pleasant to me. I also loved the concept of the religious/mystical elements of the theme.

I can see with just the projects we have done in this semester we are moving in a design direction like this. I feel like this semester was just the baby steps of much larger design projects and conceptional ideas... I cannot wait to see what lies ahead. Semester one is at a close. Time to rest and reboot... and to also prepare for the next part of my journey to becoming a designer. 

Looking Back Over the Semester

Drawing has been by far one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn. Something about my brain and hands do not always sync up and I get messy drawings and a lot of confusion.

I know that this is very important process to learn in the design field, and I have tons of worries about if I will ever be able to get it. I hope to press on and not lose any fighting strength.

I think one of my biggest regrets was not giving myself enough time to get all of my drawings done. I had some chances to have done better, and blew them by waiting until last minute to get them done. I have certainly learned how to better manage my time with homework.

I need to also learn to sketch more, because the more drawing I do, the better I can become. That is something I didn't do as much of as I wish. I wish I would have sketched a lot more.

I have enjoyed this class, even though I felt it kicked my ass all semester. I looked back over all of my drawings and I felt one of my best was the sections for the cube with the shape cut-outs. I worked for hours with Stephine to get them just right. With her help, she helped me create these

Late Posting of Scale Figures

Scale Figures Part One

Scale Figure Part Two

I liked the scale figures section. I have felt that so many of our projects in drafting are so cut and dry. I feel like with this section you get to add a little bit more of a personal touch. I liked drawing faces and clothes on them as well. It helped feed my love with the idea of fashion design. It has been a breath of fresh are to take a less "serious" drawing concepts after so much cube prospectives and sectional cut outs.

from start to finish... morning light through trees, the photo version.

this was the beginning visual idea for the lighting piece.

this was the 3-D model to accompany the visual idea. it was an abstract idea of light coming through trees.

these ideas led to the wood project previously featured on my blog.

the splinter idea carried on into the lighting piece. the following are the finished photos of light through trees.

morning light through trees.

This has been a long and painfully stressful process. I have felt several ups, and lots of downs to get to this point, and I like where it brought me in the end. I just hope my crazy mind translates to everyone else who views the piece.

My inspiration for my piece came from a slide that Leah presented to the class. It is a lighting installment from designer Tord Boontje. The following pieces are in Boontje's collection and were taken from the website.

 

I love the feel of these. they seem so precious and whimsical. It reminds me of flowers and ivy from like a fairy dream world.

I was also reading about the Dada Art movement of the early 20th century. How the events of World War I created this idea to abandon all that is considered to be art or creative works, because all that it brought us was death and destruction.

This idea brought me to think about chandeliers in general. They are usually symbols of interior prestige. Most of the time a central focal point in a room. They are most often covered with gold and silver, and drenched with crystals. An overkill item when it comes to wealth and luxury. Then I thought what would be the opposite of that?

I began to collect wood from scrap piles all around. I used nails to bound it together that had been previously used on the pieces of wood. I thought about draping it with cloth, but since this was garbage pieces, why not use garbage bags.

I tried to work the pieces together in a way that it even looked like trees, and vines, and nature. Very uneven, fragile in its shape and frame.

inside on single beam of fluorescent light peaking out. just like the light beam the morning oh so many months back.

I thought it important to work on the piece outdoors looking at the way trees would sway in the wind, and how the movement of the leaves would change the way the light came through. It caused me to miss many days in studio time, but I felt it was needed to better understand the concept of the piece.

The garbage bags were so light that the air can easily move them, causing just the slightest wind to rustle them and make it change the way the light comes through.

I felt the piece needed to be all black to better represent the original event that inspired me on that grey morning. The way the photo came out, everything in the world captured looking monochromatic.

When I step back from the piece it looks eerie and some what ghoulish. It feels much more like an art piece than a lighting piece to me. It holds some life that even myself haven't quite come to fully understand yet. I am just anxious to finally see it lite up and hanging. Photos of the final piece will be up very soon.

Hailey Taylor and Courtney Wilson Drawings

When I looked at these girls sketch books the first thing i thought, they are better than mine. I know I have my own style but I found things in both of their drawings that I would love to learn more.

Hailey is up first. I love these flowers. They are not the most detailed, but the soft shades and the delicate curves of the petals make this such a pretty sketch. It also has a hint of playfulness, which makes me enjoy it even more.

Now for Courtney. I love her self portrait drawing. It is very playful, but has so much detail too. It reminds me of a picture in a graphic novel of some sort. I love the expression. It has a lot of attitude. I feel she has the right mix. The teeth look so cool to me too, great detail.

Studio Sketches

drawing is not one of my favorite things to do. i see it's important in design and i should use it more, it just hasn't come very naturally to me. so i am still shying away from it. i have very rough skills and my drawings look much more harsh then most of my fellow students. i don't focus on detail enough. i flipped through my book and tried to find the three i felt came through better then some of the other drawings i have done.

the following two drawings came from a day i spent looking at light high the water and plants around a pond.

the next drawing was done in the studio one day just looking at light on a water bottle. i feel i still struggle to capture realistic drawings.

broken pieces... they can be fixed.

when i began working with the 2x4 piece of wood i was completely at a lose with ideas. i had no directions as to where to go or what to do. i would stare at the piece of wood for so long looking for some thought, something... and nothing.

tommy was talking to the class and mentioned something that i hadn't thought about before. splinter or split the wood. it was so different in my eyes. i began to think about previous times in life when i had seen wood that was chopped by an axe, or a tree that had been splintered by a bolt of lighting. and the shapes they made. they were much more organic than what modern saws can do.

i also began to combine this idea with my previous project of looking at light through trees. the trees were in a natural shape, and the way they bent, and moved forward and backwards in the view, they made very uneven shapes.

i also began to think about how both solar light and trees are both natural. no man power is needed to make those two things. so i thought, how about if i do not use power tools, do it all manually.

i began to splinter the wood. i did use a chinese saw to cut some groves in the first 2x4, but that later turned out not to work at all.

i toyed around with the pieces for days, with no luck what-so-ever on what to make. all the masses just looked crazy and to much like some previous chaos things i had done. i wanted to build more upwards with this one idea, and with so many small pieces and no real way to connect them, it just didn't have the power to stand.

things began to feel pretty hopeless.

i loved this splinter idea, but what to do with it. then i talked with mira.

with a simple playing around with the knots and holes that are created when the wood is splintered, we though how cool would it be to try and put it back again... a humpty dumpty story if you will.

yoko ono did installment pieces like this. she would take apart things, and then give instructions on how the pieces was created again.

so i began the process of splitting the wood again with a new 2x4.

and follows is the final outcome.

tadao ando

i was given the designer tadao ando to learn about and research. he has a very long lists of projects under his name. many mostly being in japan. his designs are very simple and the focus a lot on the use of natural lighting.

i noticed he used a lot of the same materials and designs with all of his projects. that was seen a lot with his usage of concrete walls with what appears to be little circle designs all over. it gave it a very cold and industrial feel to me.

this photo is from wikipedia. i was also very interested in just how light worked with a design like this. i can tell that the way the outside lights hit the wall face really creates an amazing lighting/shadowing effect in the doorway.

i saw this photo on wikipedia. i can really see his detail and usage of natural light here. this is the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe Japan. the way the sun come through it creates an illusion that there are more things there, like railing or stairs, but it is the shadows from those already existing things.

i agree with tadao ando's work. i think natural light makes for some pretty amazing things. just the way it shines through something, or bounces off a certain color can really create a phenomenon all it's own.

i have also learned that Tadao Ando was born in Oskaka, Japan in 1941. Wikipedia says that he worked as a trucker and a boxer before becoming and architect, and he never had any formal training. He opened his own firm in 1969. He likes to use exposed concrete in his designs. most of his designs are in japan, but he did design the modern art museum of fort worth and piccadilly gardens in manchester.

ando is a little different from the others on the list because he designs buildings and the others from what i have seen have been more of designing light installment pieces such as James Turrell and Leo Villareal. They all however find great inspiration through light and its affects on other objects and ourselves.

A and B Drawings and Object Drawing

Drawing is still the one part giving me the most problems still, without a doubt.

thinking about light

on sunday i started taking photos. i realized i like how the light was affected by leaves and branches. i think all this work with the two has me still in this mindset... not sure if that is a blessing or a curse at the moment.

i took some photos in a special spot personally. it was in a garden at my parents home. i liked how the light glowed off the shinny leaves of a holly bush.

 

i also liked how the sun had a more dull glow off of the wooden walk-way. there was also a very interesting shadow up in top right corner. it seemed to be almost creeping in.

in a matter of moments the light changed from a warm glow, to a bright pale white. the shine off the leaves was still interesting, but the back ground seems much more washed out and almost sickly looking.

monday morning mira and i talked about my ideas with these photos. we played around with editing and looked at a smaller spot on photo number one above. the spot was focused on a small light shinning through the bush.

the light coming through the twigs inside of the plant created an almost symmetrical shape... like a kaleidoscope image. mira had me now seeing light better on a smaller level. i then showed her some photos i had just taken that morning leaving my house heading to class. she felt they had much more interest to them, and that is when i decided to work with those.

i will have photos up very soon of where i will go with this design project. this is to be continued...

12 twigs... so many ideas.

my very first idea when presented with this design project started when i was just tracing in my sketch book. i liked this idea of perhaps combining the twigs in this shape or bundle and creating artificial nature like pine cones out of some form of paper. it was my first idea and it was very similar to a previous idea i held from the first design project with the leaf and paper.

after presenting my drawings in class, i went back down to the studio... and began to think. i looked out the massive windows and noticed something that really caught my eye. i loved how the skyline of greensboro seemed to just be growing up and out of this huge vast plain of trees. i went home and started to work.

my first idea was to create this mass of twigs with something that appeared to be buildings growing up through the sticks. i played around with some visual ideas, but nothing was coming together. this is my original sketch book idea.

shortly after i began working on this idea... i in-countered a various amount of changes. i started enjoying this idea of the man-made and the twigs being interwoven with one another, in this chaos. that is what brought me to my final. this idea was very similar to a left over idea from the leaf and paper project, i just didn't have the means to carry it out then. i believe the medium made this one much more possible.

Leaf Drawings

paper & leaf photos

idea number one... looking back i actually hate i didn't move more in this kind of direction.

final photo number one

final photo number two

paper & leaf

well, my first design idea is coming to an end. after days and days of working endlessly with paper and leaves, i feel i have come to know exactly what my ideas are and how to convey them.

when i first approached this idea, i saw a lot of japanese cultural influences. bonsai trees and ikebana floral arrangements. cultural ties are always a very early start for me. i also liked the idea of combining the leaf on the paper to make it appear as something natural, like rocks. i took photos of leaves on rocks and began some major brainstorming.

for the second class session i began to play around with paper textures. how to turn just simple computer paper into something that looked aged and carried a rough and ridged texture to it. at this point in my process i also began to less favor the new and green leaves and began to fall in love with the colors, textures, and shapes of the dried old leaves.

i then moved in a direction of combining the paper, now with very realistic textures very similar to leaves through processes of damping the paper, tearing, rubbing on concrete, and even blowing cigarette smoke over the damp paper to give it yellow and brown stains, i played with the idea of making the paper look like the same leaf as the real one. i liked combining this idea of artificial growing just as a leaf would from a plant. i also had this very childish and naive notion of looking at the two items now, and viewing them as roommates. if this leaf had a buddy, what would he be like, was a constant question i began to ask myself as i worked with the paper.

this childish idea was also sparked within me because i felt like a young mind again. i was playing with items in my hands, the sky was the limit on where i could go... i let my imagination take over. it was like playing in my own world again. it began at the point to feel very therapeutic and liberating.

then i feel the last and final step process came when i choose the holly leaf to be my favorite. i like the scary points at the end. i began to study the leaf, and i started to wonder about his personality. i saw the holly as standoffish and reclusive. so i began to play on the idea of his home, what would he want to live in, and through earlier texture ideas and playing off earlier ideas, i finally found the fit.

the showing is tomorrow. i feel proud in my work. it was a road that was not always easy, but i feel i have grown to know my creative process a lot better. i hope to have photos up soon.

drafting... so lost.

this drafting section is taking me for a hard ride. i am not understanding or feeling like i am doing well in this section at all. i hate not being able to get this, but it really has me confused. my lines all seem off, my pencil lines are way to dark... hell, i am even having trouble picking a song to use.

it has me really stressed too. i have been working at my job, and trying to do this as well. i feel kinda pulled in 900 directions. my mind is all over the freakin' place right now.

the paper-leaf project, the dubbed title i have given it,  i feel much more relaxed and understanding of. i feel that i have a much more "creative" mind then a "technical" mind. believe that is why drafting letters is hard to me. i am already knowing now though, that this is where i am going to have to put extra practice too.

i have put in all i can for this evening i do believe. off to bed... back to the grind in the morning.

today...

i began work on letter drafting today. i can see possible problems here. i have never been an amazing writer when it comes to letters, i have always had "chicken-scratch" and i am still having problems with drawing straight lines, even with a ruler. i am holding out though. this is where i want to be, and this is what i want to do.

corny as it may sound... i am carrying this idea into my paper-leaf project. i like playing with the organic growing from the man-made. i have some beginning ideas that i hope to take even more in-depth.

big changes... so short of time

well, the first week of school is in full gear now... and i am feeling it. this project idea due here, this design idea due there... whew... go, go go. i am not exactly having the easiest time keeping my pace, but i am trying, and content with trying harder and harder. I created my header tonight. tomorrow morning all can see. i am pleased with the design. i still feel i need lots of work with drafting. it's getting late. time to sleep and prepare for tomorrow.

how i find my mojo, man.

when i am looking for something to give my a spark of genius, or in better terms, to inspire me, i look to many things. i find it in friends, nature, television, fashion, music, art and anything else around me that i see beauty in. beauty and inspiration come from so many things... my eyes have to always be open and looking. nothing should be missed.