I thought picture books were for children?

With only two weeks left to sketch, I am a little disappointed that my time in Barcelona is coming to a close. For the second time in two weeks I am finally started to feel like my sketching is accomplishing what 'I thought' it was accomplishing from day one. Although this is not my closing post, I did learn a lot today, and over the course of the past three months which I would like to discuss. I started this blog topic in an attempt to possible learn more about sketching. Since I have a strong background in art I was always though that sketching was a visual representation of what you see. Which it still is, but what I have learned that in order to dissect a structure, or piece of architecture analytically, you need to look beyond what it looks like from that angle at that time, because what I failed to realized is that every great piece of architecture that I might experience in my lifetime, will not be a planned field trip as a part of a class, and it may not be something that is a precedent for a project. You may just be passing by, or on a leisurely stroll. Either way there is most likely going to have a time limit on how long you can view the space. And although I enjoy relaxing with my pencil and sketching a perspective of the area or landscape with full tonal value, when I only have a few minutes or even an hour to get the big idea, that type of sketching may not be appropriate and a picture could serve the same purpose. The type of representational analytical sketching which I have adapted and am finally starting to perfect has been more helpful over the past few weeks. Getting down guidelines and basic page layout helps to tell a story or narrate the space you are observing.
Today we did an exercise, much like the last one, where we were instructed to create a narrative through composition. And just like our last assignment we had a time limit. We were given the urban renewal area of Barcelona near Santa Catarina Maria Market, which was a new urban plan to open up the city and link the Villa Citadel to another older part of the city. The space was rejuvenated by the refurbishing of the Market and an addition of newer modern housing for the area. In looking at the given site I noted what was most interesting to me. The joining of the old to the new was the most interesting. I started with a plan at the urban scale with the insertion of the new buildings, and then I looked at the massing of the new block like shapes that seemed to be stacked on top of one another, with a facade that matched exactly with the old fabric on the one side. So I procceded with an axon, which could use a little more work, but I wanted to show the layers of the new modern forms, with the boxes and then the older fabric in which the new form was attached to. I really think in a city with as much history as Barcelona the fusion of the new and the old is very important.
Again, with every day that passes, although the excitement of returning home to the states is still there, it is bittersweet. With everything that I have learned over the past few months, I am sad to see this experience coming to an end. I will upload this sketchbook page shortly.
ADIOS