Dying Easter Eggs..... shades of brown :-(

Easter weekend and Laura came to visit oh and the kids from Rome and Gavin and I meet Laura's friend Lisa, who is studying in Barcelona. So exciting! It was a full house all weekend, which was great! So I got to take Laura to see all of the typical BCN sites, the port, the beach, the fish, Gaudi's architecture, and of course the night life! Oh and I also set out this weekend to paint Easter eggs, but was very disappointed to find out that white eggs were difficult to find in Barcelona. :-( very sad. so instead I decided to practice my watercolors and make them look like eggs. It's almost the same, only not quite as delicious. But there is no need to hard boil them either, so it has its positive aspects.

Anyways, so staying on topic with the sketching. I painted eggs into my sketchbook! It was fun and festive, although not analytical, but good practice none the less!

More soon, time for church

The Orange Moon

So this week in sketching class we were introduced to watercolor!!! I was definitly a little excited. We also practiced a variety of pen techniques and tonal value, which was very helpful. Although there are still some things that don't seem to be clear, but I am working on it. To start we did a series of tonal values with primary colors, red, blue and yellow for those that may not remember from elementray art class. Then we practiced different techniques for mixing water colors, which I really enjoyed. Although I am very pround of my skills when it comes to art, watercolor is something I have always struggled with. It is one of those things that requires patience, and that is a quality that I am severly lacking. The layering techniques that we used were mixed in the palete, wet on dry and wet on wet. The best results in my mind were the pre-mixed or the wet on dry. After our experimentation with color we took a step back and started to use grey scale. We were instructed to draw an orange. First in grey scale then in color. As I started to do my oranges my acrylic painting skills came into play and I try to make the tome blend from one to another all at once without letting anything dry. This technique did not work so well, my orange ended up looking like a moon, which i guess you could say is what I was going for, but it wasn't. My second attempt, still in grey scale was a little better, but still did not resemble an orange. I tried to layer my tones instead of blending while wet, because blending while wet seemed to rip up my paper and just got the entire drawing way to wet. My third try, which was color started to get better. I now layer correctly, but I needed to get the tones and the shadows on the orange correct. My last attemp finally looked like a recognizable orange. It took me the longest to do, but I layed everything one tone at a time, and once I put the second tone down it enevitably blended into the tone on the underside.

This week we also worked with Ink in an attempt to get better with toning in pen. We started with a series of lines at different weights and different techniques. The lines were then combined, some closer together and some farther apart to create and allusion of different tones. The third step is direction was added to the strokes of the lines, which added to the darkness of the tone. The more directions overlaping one another the darker the tone got.

Back to reality...if you can even call it reality?

So I'm now back from my spring break adventures and there is a lot that I need to blog about! We got our next projects this week, and we also got grades. Which were not great, but I guess if they were perfect, I wouldn't have any room for improvement, and living up to perfection is very hard. But we will see how it goes from here. Back to Project 3, it is an intensive 2 week site analysis in groups, where we have to go out and get information, which is avaliable, but not always easy to get. Once the information is obtained we are being asked to produce a graphic representation of the information that we uncovered. So today I called the Architect who is currently building on the open plot that is next to our studio. Jessie got me his name and number from MBM Architects, the firm that rents us our studio space. I set up a meeting for me and two other group members tomorrow at 5pm, where he will be able to give us the necessary information for our analysis, which is fantastic. Hopefully he will be able to help us a lot with elevations and zoning, because so far that seems to be the most difficult information to find. I am really looking forward to our meeting with him tomorrow.

As far as my sketchbook goes, I had a meeting with Christy today, and she had some very good feedback which I will now need to take and start to impliment into my sketching. Over the past few weeks I have been exploring my stlye of sketching, and analytical sketching as a whole, but now after exploration Christy would like me to focus myself in on a style that I have developed which describes my own personal experience, and try to make my sketchbook consitate. So that is my new goal. Along with exploration of architectural concepts in my sketchbook I now will need to focus my sketching on my personal style and technique of sketching that way my sketchbook is more cohesive and blends better.

Until next time :-)

My Polish Adventures

So after my trip to wonderful warm and sunny Greece, I decided to venture into the snowy fridged Polish Countryside to visit a friend in Poznan. Poznan being a smaller city in Poland we decided to venture east to Warsaw, Poland and west to Berlin, Germany!!!! Fantastic and interesting trips to both. More updates on Poland soon!!!!

:-)

All I know is that I know nothing

¨All I know is that I know nothing¨ - Socrates

Greece... well what can I saw it is pretty much an absolutely fantastic place. I have been spending the past few days in Athens seeing all the typical sights, meeting some very friendly people, having a blast with good friends, and most of all sketching my butt off!!!!!! Which I am actually starting to enjoy a lot more :-) Through my studies in Barcelona and abroad I am trying to examine my sketching techniques and build upon the skills that I currently have. It has been a constant struggle for me, such a stubborn person, to change her ways and look at another persons point of view. But I have been talking with some other students, from the Rome Program that have a slightly different perspective on things, and I have been forcing myself to look deeper into what I am doing. Athens has been an adventure from the start!!!! With the delay of my flight in the Barcelona airport to kick off what turned out to be an awesome trip. Being an architecture student stuck in an airport for an extra two hours, what could I possibly do with all that time? The only thing I had on me was a bag of clothes, a sketchbook, and some pens....oh that's right SKETCH! So that is what I did.

My first set of sketches on this trip I tried to completely abandon almost everything I have ever known about sketching. I wanted to start with basic shapes, and leave out all the pretty tones in order to examine the airport. I also wanted to try to portray a feeling with my sketch, which I am noticing is hard, unless you draw a pretty picture, which is what I am trying not to do. I noticed a lot of things about the airport that I thought would be interesting to analyse, and after much consideration I decided on connection. I started to contemplate drawing types which might be good for describing a connection between the frame of the wall and the glass, and I thought an exploded axon would be an interesting way to describe it. As my sketchbook page started to come together I thought that some tome would help the sketches become more clearly read, because the lines were a bit confusing. Slowly I added in a few tones, trying not to over due it and create another pretty picture. Itś very interesting to me that something I have done for ages could be so hard, so far I think the way you tone an analytical sketch could make the sketch more readable or a lot more confusing. I think my page turned out okay, but again I am still getting used to this style of drawing it is not something I particularly like, or would do in my free time, but I am starting to see some benefits of it. I feel as though I will not be satisfied with my sketches until I can analytically sketch as well as a draw what I see. When drawings are concerned I like perfecting and at this point in the words of my good friend Howra, I think my sketches are only ¨satisfactory¨. As soon as I get back to school I will be posting all my sketches, so that people can better understand what I am talking about.

Adios for now!