Drinking and Drawing

Our assignment was to find a public place and draw vignettes with people in them



I drew this one while I was waiting for my friend in the fitting room. I decided to go sit outside the store and draw a few of the stores across from me.

These were the two ladies sitting not too far away from me in the food court who were making really exaggerated hand movements the entire time I was watching them.

OPUS 2

ILLUMINATE
When I think about illuminating something, I think about making it brighter, bringing attention to it, and giving it a sense of character. Having already drawn a few things in my sketchbook for class using merely a black pen, I went back and added watercolors to help illuminate and emphasize the drawing.



One image that I did was of a wearable artifact from class made by Haley Preston. Another sketch that I used watercolors for was a vignette from our drawing design class.

Something else that has been illuminated in history are the Pyramids of Giza. Although it is not there anymore, the pyramids were originally cased in "finely fitted limestone" that "was later removed to build portions of Cairo" (Roth, 196).


Pyramids of Giza

The sun gleams down on the white limestone covering the pyramids in the middle of the desert and reflects off of the pyramids. Thus, the sunlight illuminates its importance as the shine of the mountains stands out from the rest of the baron desert.

MATERIAL
Materials come in many different textures, shapes, and forms. Ancient Egyptians used animal hides as material to create tee-pees for their shelter. Similarly, Cro-Magnon humans, residing mostly in the Ukraine, lived in huts that "had masses of mammoth bones piled around the perimeter and apparently were covered with hides" as well (Roth, 164).



In middle stone age villages in Serbia, "houses had trapezoidal plans...and hard limestone plaster floors, with central stone-lined hearths" (Roth 166). In these times, the use of natural materials was very important and greatly impacted their living conditions and survival tactics.


(Picture taken from Roth, 166)


IDIOM
An idiom is described as a group of words in which the meaning is not taken literally from the words but is rather understood as a phrase. One example of an idiom is "a picture says a thousand words."


Along with my Interior Architecture courses, one of the other classes I am taking is Mythology, where we recently went over Pandora's Box. Not to be taken literally, Pandora's Box is not a physical box. It is an idiom that describes a process that generates complex problems as the result of unwise interference.




COMMODITY - FIRMNESS - DELIGHT
Vitruvius stated that "architecture...must provide utility, firmness, and beauty or, as Sir Henry Wotten later paraphrased it in the seventeenth century, commodity, firmness, and delight" (Roth 11). When I think of commodity, firmness, and delight, I think of the utility or function of a piece of architecture, the sturdiness of it, and the way it aesthetically pleases the eye.


Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a good example of how commodity, firmness, and delight were used thousands of years ago. "As recent investigations suggest, this complex served as an astronomical observatory....[and] other alignments within the complex suggest that Stonehenge might have been used to mark phases and eclipses of the moon and other astronomical phenomena" (Roth 173).


Stonehenge

As we talked about in class, Stonehenge had many different forms of utility, all of which are possibilities for what it was actually intended to be used for. Besides astronomical usages, Stonehenge was also used as a ceremonial grounds for the dead. The inner formation/structure of the large rocks indicate specific places for people to stand and a very defined center in which the main activities were held. Not only does this structure have utility and firmness, but the way in which all the rocks were put together is beautiful. The unity of all three of these ideas shows in the unity that Stonehenge portrays.


Although I talked about our "Pat's Chair" project last week, I feel that it fits in well with idea of commodity, firmness, and delight for this week as well.



The chair that I constructed for this project contains storage space yet is simple and compact. I also used some detail on the sides with the small step-like pattern that I continued in other places throughout the entirety of the chair.

SYNOPSIS
Commodity, firmness, and delight are three words that all form the "power of three" and the idea of total unity when it comes to architecture. Although these three concepts are the majority of what good architecture is, I feel that materiality, illumination, and idiom are also three words that link together. However, I feel that all of these six words together form a greater idea of what good architecture should be. I have found it very useful to have all of these concepts in mind as I create my own models and drawings. I want whatever I create to be firm, functional, pleasing to the eye, and have context and meaning.

Vignettes

Watercolor added to vignette from the "musical cubicles" exercise in class last week

In our design drawing class last week, we did an exercise called "musical cubicles." We started out at our desk drawing a vignette of something in our cubicle and when the music stopped we left our drawing at our desk and went to a different cubicle. When the music started up again we continued drawing the vignette that had already been started at that cubicle. It was definitely a fun way to spend class! After 4 or 5 times moving cubicles and working on different vignettes, we went back and added watercolors.

Drawing a few vignettes in my room while watching LOST

Scale figure examples

Images courtesy of Simon Rouby

Images courtesy of Julie Oakley

Image courtesy of Jason Das

Images courtesy of Anthony Zierhut

Image courtesy of Farolas

Drawing Scale Figures

Some of the scale figures I drew both in and out of class, taking about 60 seconds on each person

OPUS 1

ARTIFACTS
An artifact can be anything that has meaning to you. Something that was given to you, something that you earned, or something that represents you. The artifacts that are important to you help to illustrate who you are. Some of my artifacts include my travel pillow that has been with me almost every time I travel, both in the United States and the few times I've gone overseas, my Israel scrapbook which documents the two months I spent studying abroad in Israel, and hearts from when a group of my close friends "heart-attacked" my room for my 18th birthday.


















STORIES
Everyone has his or her own story that tells who that person is. After reading the children's fairytale "The Spindle, The Shuttle, and The Needle," I am able to see how the simple details and morals of the story relate to real life. In the story, for example, a poor girl in a small village ends up marrying a prince and they live happily ever after. The story portrays the idea that everyone should have faith and hope and that good things can happen to anyone.

Even though she thought she was worth nothing, the prince "stopped his horse, and saw through the window, on which the bright sun was shining, the girl sitting at her spinning-wheel, busily spinning" -Grimms Fairy Tales. As the prince searched for both the poorest girl and the richest girl in countless villages, he finds that this poor girl, busily working trying to earn money, is also the richest girl.

TRANSLATION
Being able to translate our ideas and concepts into a reality is one of the most important things we can learn to do well. In our current studio project, I found the word translation to be a good word to describe what we are doing. After creating numerous sketches of ideas and details of our chair/table/workstation/storage project, we have to translate our two-dimensional objects into three-dimensional objects which requires a great deal of translation of measurements and imagination.

"The columns of the Propylaia are splendid examples of one of the three column types the Greeks evolved for their civic and religious architecture" (Roth, 30) This is a good example of how culture from different time periods is translated into a work of architecture.


MULTIVIEW
There are many different ways to look at objects or concepts. Every time you look at something in a different way, you can put things in a different perspective and can draw different conclusions from them. Every side of a building offers something different to consider. This past weekend, I was in Utah visiting my sister and I was amazed by all the mountains surrounding me. Any way you view them they are beautiful and there is always something to see.

CYCLE
A cycle is something that continues to grow and evolve. It is something that shows how a certain combination of events yields a set of results over and over again. The design cycle, for example, shows a continuance of cultural growth. In our History of Design (IAR 221) class, an example of a cycle was given: A chair is constructed and valued for its intricate design and beauty and is thus sold for a great deal of money. It stays in someone's house for a few years, and then is maybe passed down to a daughter or son who then gives it to their child after a few years as 'cheap furniture' to use as they move into an apartment. When they move out of the apartment, they sell the chair to a pawn shop or leave it out for the trash until someone sees it and puts it into an antique museum. This cycle shows how something has great value, then is considered old and not valuable, and then how it ends up back in a high-value setting.



SYNOPSIS
All five words for this week's Opus, Artifacts, Stories, Translation, Multiview, and Cycle, are all inter-related. All of these concepts relate to the idea that we carry the past with us and build upon it to help create and influence our future. Without the artifacts, we would have nothing to remember our past, stories can only continue if they have a solid past to build upon, and translation helps us to interpret our past and see how we can improve our actions for the future. Multiview allows us to see our past, present, and future in different perspectives that we can learn from, and the cycle is the series of events and results that continue to form as we continue on from the past to the future.

Timeline

Timeline: 1475

1475 BC

Institutions
o The obelisk in London erroneously known as "Cleopatra's Needle" is erected in the Egyptian Helopolis to celebrate the recent ascension of Pharaoh Thutmose III.
o At the tomb of vizier rekh-me-re at thebes, a wall painting depicts a brazing operation
Governance
o Achaeans invade and conquer Eastern Crete
o The Israelite Exodus from Egypt and slavery
o The Minoan civilization suffered constant natural catastrophes: floodings, earthquakes and maybe volcanoes caused loss of population and destroyed towns and palaces
o Egyptian Campaigns in Palestine and Syria
o Campaigns of Babylon
o Hittite-Hurrian Wars
o Hittite Conquest of Anatolia
Commerce
o The beginning of wide Hellenic expansion in the Mediterranean.
Technology
o A picture is painted showing the teenaged pharaoh holding a baseball-bat-like-object, with a hieroglyphic caption stating that he is engaged in a game of seker-hemat, literally "hitting-the-ball."

References:
http://everything2.com/e2node/1475%2520BC
http://www.classicalscore.com/ancientperiod.htm
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/chron/chron1.html
http://www.weldinghistory.org/whistoryfolder/brazing/bh_pre1900s.html
http://www.warscholar.com/Year/1499BC.html

1475 AD

Institutions
o The Turks erected a mosque in the center of Banja Luka
o Shkodra fell to the Ottoman Turks and many Albanians fled to southern Italy, Greece, Egypt, and elsewhere; many remaining were forced to convert to Islam.
o The oldest recorded game of chess is played, between Francesco di Castellvi and Narciso Vinyoles.
Governance
o Treaty of Picquigny] king Louis XI buys English contacts
o Future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, a member of the Habsburg family of Austria, married Mary of Burgundy, heiress of all the Netherlands
o Russia takes over Novgorod
Commerce
o The Swiss began annexing the southern approaches to the strategic and lucrative St. Gothard Pass over the Alps
o After four years of war, Spain agreed to allow a Portuguese monopoly of trade along Africa's west coast and Portugal acknowledged Spain's rights in the Canary Islands.
Technology
o An edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was printed by William Caxton
o William Caxton sets up printing press at Westminster
o Kiva Han, the world's first coffee house, opens in Constantinople, now modern day Istanbul.

References:
http://din-timelines.com/1475-1479_timeline.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1475