Atlas of Colour IV

This workshop was tough but enjoyable. It was nice to loosen up on the technicalities of drawing and communications and focus on the more creative aspects. Like painting. Although my artistic skills seem to be lacking/borderline nonexistent, I enjoyed it because it was something I had not done for ages (being an engineer and all).

The general consensus amongst my peers is this workshop, comparatively, is a lot more work than other workshops. The Motion workshop was nowhere near this tough.

Here are the pages of my Atlas for you all to look and stare in pure wonderment at.

Atlas of Colour III

Today was a lengthy studio session. It involved going through everyone's esquisse and letting them explain it. Although I like this idea of group discussion, these presentations went on FOREVER. I think it would've been better to have just the tutor go through the presentations in small groups, as the amount of time that was spent on it severely cut into the time I was hoping to have to work on my atlas in class. I guess they only good thing about it was that I had a revelation about the navigation system for my atlas while I was meant to be listening to other peoples presentations. It's all revolved around the weather, but I'm not sure I'll use it yet, so we'll see how it turns out.

Anyway earlier that day we went for a bit of a field trip to the central synagogue (ironically nowhere near Central station) to have a look at the 49 veils work. This was a great exercise as it showed us how colour layering could produce different effects, along with harmony and contrast and other colour related techniques we had learned in class but not quite seen in real life. Although the task we were meant to be complete was a bit sketchy at first, we managed to finish up relatively early with enough information and measurements to finish it at home.

Following my navigation idea, I drew up this sheet to help myself grasp the concept of how it would work out:

Atlas of Colour II

Painting. I love it. We did some stuff today. But most importantly we did PAINTING!!

It's been so long since I've used a brush (of all varieties, I don't comb my hair either) and it was so much fun to sit down in a group and paint the picture on the screen, see everyone's interpretations etc. The idea of exaggeration of a particular aspect of the building, be it of form or colour, was a good thing to practice for the upcoming project painting, plus it also gives the painting a bit more of an abstract feel. If its so realistic, why not just make it a photograph, and if it's so technical, why not just make it a drawing. Or at least that was my way of thinking about it.

This is my painting:


Obviously its not fantastic. My peers says it looks like Spiderman... except its a building. I keep thinking the building on the bottom left looks like licorice. It was unintentional though, I really was trying to paint a proper picture. But most importantly it was fun and I learned something.

Atlas of Colour I

First workshop rotation today. Before we continue I'd like to point out I got a CR for my film. Improvements must be made.

Ok, today was good, I'm looking forward to this workshop every week already. I very interesting presentation on colour theory (now I know why some of my clothes don't match, duh!) that was particularly relevant to not just architecture and architectural communications but also to how we perceive colour in the world in general. Very insightful.

A couple of colour related group exercises followed. These were great, everyone settled down and it was a chance to have some fun while still learning stuff about colour. Choosing our personal colours and looking at their meanings was interesting, and correct to a degree I guess. I picked myself as Yellow or Green, but to my friends apparently I'm more of a Navy Blue. Who knew?

Either way this was a good lead up to the first task, designing an elevation and giving it a colour theme. I got a bit carried away with the design (I think this is a bad habit, I should really be kept on a tight creative leash so I actually do my work), but in the end I came up with something that was half ship, half land dwelling and colored it accordingly.