AMERICA, the beautiful

Okay so I am back from Barcelona, and have been adjusting to life back in the states for about 3 weeks now, and my quest to learn about sketching and architecture is not over. Although not required for class anymore I am still interested in upkeeping this blog as a personal journey of my final years as a student. With 3 weeks gone by, and only a little sketching done, I hope to pick up a pen soon and 'hit the books' so to say. Keep checking back for updates and scans of my current work.

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

My run in with the 'Holy Family'

Okay, so today was the most amazing day I have had since I have been here. We got a private tour of the Sagrada Familia!!!! in english the Holy Family. And for those of you that don't know that is one of Antonio Gaudi's most famous work in the world. The Sagrada Familia towers over Barcelona's skyline, with only eight of its tweleve bell towers complete. The tour was given to us by the current head Architect on the project. Not his workers, the architect himself, and it was one of the most amazing things ever. Usually most tourist get to walk through the part of the church that is not covered in scafulding, but we got the behind the scenes tour. We started off in the main Naive of the church, and then got to ride the elevator to the highest completed point on the church, which is only about half as high as the finished structure will be. With hard hats and all we were allowed to explore, with some limitations the areas which are currently underconstruction. At some points we were visiting parts of the church that upon completion will still not be viewed or touched by people. I will say, that the ride up to the top of the Sagrada Familia made me very nervous and almost sick to my stomach, but after arriving at the top I was so excited to be there I forgot all about being just short of 100 meters in the air. So we went to La Sagrada Familia, with the current architect on the job and got a behind the scenes tour. Could you ask for anything more.

2 hours and a full page later....

Okay so in sketching class yesterday we did an exercise which I feel I have learned the most from. We were given a site (COAC), and we were told to sketch anything we wanted, but we had to tell a story through our sketches, but they needed to be analytical. We had to compose a page, guidelines only, which contained the significant ideas of the architecture on both the architectural and urban scale. So I did just that. I looked at the overall plan in relation to the section of the building. I also looked at the volumetiric forms of the building. The challenge of this exercise was not gathering the information. It was the time frame in which we were given. We had 45 minutes to look at everything as a whole, and get it all down on the page. This is very challanging because as a perfectionist I have a hard time getting things down in a limited amount of time, but much to my surprise I got the section, plan, and most of the axon finished in that time.... (not finished yet) thats all for now

Morocco... Mo Mo... and Monkeys...

Morocco and Monkeys... thats all I have to say... more coming...

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.