Drawing IV

All done for Architectural Communications for the semester. I spent most of this week working on the drawings (and by most I mean Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and lots of time in between) and I think they turned up OK. I stuck with what I knew I was good at in this presentation. It was important to build my drawings around what I thought about the building but also include my drawing strengths. So I stuck with military projection! It's my favourite drawing approach (I also used in extensively in BENV1080), although apparently it's a bit outdated.

The 3D drawing was by far the most fun. Drawing the huge axonometric was great because even in its early stages you could see it piecing together, and it just made me want to finish more of it.
The layered plans was also built on this idea of the military projection. I wanted to build a sense of traveling between planes with this drawing, and I think/hope I achieved this with the centre axis as the stairwell. The elevation and section were placed next to the axis to sort of "build up" to it, using the profile of the landscape to try to draw similarities between the building and the environment it is in.

Either way the drawings are now off for a year to pretty much be never seen again (not that I mind). I happy with how this course turned out, it allowed me to practice what I wasn't very good at but still gave me an opportunity to strengthen some of my more developed drawing techniques. Check out my final submission below.

Drawing III

Only one week left now, but things are beginning to get a little more hectic with these drawings for the main assignment. Today was pretty easy and fun, explore how you believed you wanted your presentations to be laid out, and shade in some elevations and handed in all the in-class work.

The mock-up was a bit of a mess, I used two A1 sheets to try and develop a 1:1 scale of what I wanted to do. In the end some helpful advice from Ken made it easier to develop an idea with a solid theme behind it, it made what I was trying to say a lot clearer (see below, picture is a bit hard to see though).



The elevation shading was an interesting task. For a marked assessment it looked unremarkably easy at first, but then it got more difficult considering sun position and various other factors. It made me try to build the building into a 3D form from elevations and plans and then apply the sunlight to it. I think the end result in surprisingly effective, it makes a plain looking elevation look a lot more realistic and gives it a lot of depth (see below).



That's my final drawing for the perspective as well.

Progress with the drawings for the main assignment is slow but at least existent, some people haven't even started yet!

Drawing II

OK so today we had to bring our finished cup in (see below) for marking. Turns out it wasn't for marking but just to look at, and instead it will be due next week... but at least it's done early.



And today we had to draw a perspective. But only after we watched the little presentation on perspectives. I share a bit of a love/hate relationship with perspective drawings. I was never a fan of them back in high school technical drawing because you could never use measurements to define the "depth" of your drawing. Instead you had to estimate an 'approximate' that you think looked appropriate. This part is probably the hardest thing about perspective drawings for me, to initially determine what 'looks' correct. But I do like them because they look really good when they're finally done!

This was also my first experience using trace paper. I thought it was pretty neat actually, its got a certain plastic quality to it that makes rubbing lines out really easy, and it doesn't smudge as much as cartridge paper. So yea made some progress on that in class, hopefully will finish it up sometime this week.

Drawing I

Our first drawing class revolved around an introduction to drawing tools and general methods. I found the lecture slides on this very interesting, especially those that looked at the different types of drawing boards, as I consider myself much more of a detailed, precise drawer than one who uses freehand to communicate their ideas. The huge drawings boards just look as cool, I'd love to end up owning one where i can draw for hours without getting a sore back and having to rotate the paper to fill the drawing area on the small A3 drawing board I currently own.

Our first exercise was to draw a cup and saucer. I enjoyed some aspects of this task, like taking measurements and sketching up drawing spaces, but I wasn't happy when told I had to draw the circles free-hand instead of using my compass which I was used to. I guess free-hand drawing is a skill I should develop, but I've spent so long doing engineering drawings that are so structured and specific that I feel I can't produce a quality drawing without all my tools available to me. Nonetheless, I got a draft done (see below, along with technical drawing of measurements) which will hopefully help me when I produce a final one for marking.