Greenwich Park

It's a very long time since I'd been to Greenwich Park so it was lovely to spend the afternoon there on Thursday. Having read a lot of the stuff that last years group did, it made it really interesting, especially looking at the areas they recommended for improvement. I liked the main house, large, spacious rooms with high ceilings and a great staircase, spiralling up, quite impressive,

Looking up through the centre of the spiral staircase

A beautiful old tree

I wonder if the architects had to do an elevation from the top of this hill as part of planning approval for the City!

Marian gave good constructive feedback on the group document and now it's time to press on with the CMP, this week is writing the statement of significance so need to crack on...

Wood Wharf review

Tutorial went well on Friday, Paula had a lot of constructive comments and I spent time at the weekend working through them and making revisions. Today Julia looked through the revisions and made a few more comments, so I'm really pleased as I can crack on with the final design and then get some good graphics together. I changed my mind on the shape of the trees and have gone for fastigiate as they will work better with the other shapes.

Sketch showing trees in planters to match shape of main sculpture feature, positioned in front of seating and glass screens

Wood Wharf Ideas

Before we had our Model Making intro on Monday I'd already been out and bought some playdo, I know this isn't high tech but it's quite easy to mould (well it is for ages 3+). I can't wait to do a model in the model shop, all those tools and machines... 

So I developed the ideas that came out of last weeks tutorial and came up with a design plan. The title for my design is 'A Natural Reflection'. The two areas we are designing are very different, one quite stark and modern and the other quite natural; with all the water and glass there is reflection and so I felt the title united the two parts. 

There will be tall highly polished steel sculptures which I originally thought would be tall and slender but Paula raised a good point about their stability and to think about a wider base, so I then thought about the onion shapes in Chaumont although on a much larger scale. Also to give them have a purpose so I thought they could be made into seats. The top of each sculpture will have down facing spotlights to cast shards of light at night.

Original thoughts, to have tall, slender columns

Changed the shape to onion but keeping them tall and having seats in them, you need to imagine these are steel and not bright yellow

In the sunlight they'll cast striking shadows at certain times of day

An idea of the steel sculptures with the seat inset and going all the way round

The lattice onion shapes from one of the Chaumont show gardens - at night this garden looked great, the onions were lit up from the inside and cast beautiful shadows with the light

The design also gives reference to the olympics with the layout in the centre part as 5 piece grid. As one arrives in the space off the footbridge there is an angular covered walkway lined with Betula in wooden planters. This is repeated in front of the multiscreen TV under the circle. Along the bottom north side there are coloured perspex screens etched with previous olympians in action, larger than life. These are repeated at the top west edge with the names of all the countries taking part in 2012. Not finished yet but as the design moves into the natural side so the shapes will become more organic and the design will have a softer feel. Get some feedback in tutorial tomorrow and then try to get the plan finished, next step will be to bring it to life in Sketch up and Photoshop, both new programmes for me, doing ok so far with Photoshop (I think) so looking forward to getting my brain round Sketch Up.

The Red House

A very enjoyable morning spent at the Red House, which was once the home to William Morris and his family. How lovely to find an oasis in the middle of a built up, urban area. The garden was interesting in that the orchard felt quite wild and neglected whereas other areas were more orderly and cared for. It gave a really good feeling of rooms and different spaces in the garden,
Our guide was great, his enthusiasm and knowledge added a huge amount to the visit. Inside the house it lacked warmth - I don't just mean hot radiators - it could be brought more to life, probably in the way Standen has been. It is a relatively new acquisition by the NT so maybe there are plans to add artefacts etc, in the future.

The Red House

The afternoon was good, we all presented our A1 historical layer posters for Knole, it brought the whole story to life, I think the exhibition will look good with the final pieces of work.

The first hand in as well, the A3 research document was completed and handed over to Marian along with a digital copy. A group project that came together really well in the end. We have learnt things from it - timing, communication, software issues, roles - which we can use in our next group project.

Eastbourne - Sovereign Park

I'm wondering if the overall theme for this year is wind.

Interesting visit to Eastbourne, last time I was there it was on the bike, a beautiful hot sunny day and it was packed with people, it couldn't have been more different to yesterday. I love the sea, whatever the weather, it's completely invigorating.

Included a few photos, it'll be good to capture the different moods as the winter draws on.

Photoshop - bucketfill

I've been playing with colour swatches and bucket filling. I can see this has amazing potential. I need to adjust the swatches. In a large area the fill is in a sequence of squares, this is particularly evident in the sky and the grass (picture below). I guess I need to make sure the original swatch is more even on the edges rather than fading out slightly, Jamie will probably talk us through this a bit more. I need to look at some of the things like tools preferences and feather brush that Jamie mentioned to enhance what I'm doing. But for first attempt I'm quite pleased. 

Model filled with own colour swatches

Quick sketch filled with own colour swatches using bucketfill

Colours

I did three sets of colour swatches using different mediums; Crayons and pastels, Felt Tip, Watercolour. I then scanned them and printed them out and was pleasantly surprised by how near they were to the originals. I'll also try printing them at Uni to see how the colours work there. I like the crayon and pastel and the watercolour; my least favourite is the felt tip, it seems a little heavy although I am sure there will be times when that is useful.

Interesting, looking at them posted here the felt tip looks ok, in fact better than the pencil. I'll colour some sketches in and experiment.

Helping Hand - A1 Photo Montage

The task was to create a dynamic composition from the four photoshop montages of our models in situ. I tried a few different ideas and settled on this one. I turned the hand upside down and used it as the main theme and backdrop for the montage, the idea is it is the 'helping hand' and the model is the symbol for us in our lives - a resting place for the elderly person; the career ladder for the ambitious; the roadblock for the police.

I skewed the photos a little and used an opacity. Used the task as a getting to know more about Photoshop exercise.

Helping Hand

Wood Wharf

An interesting site for the competition. There were two things that struck me:

• how different the two spaces are, one side quite stark and modern and incredibly windy and the other completely natural, neglected and sheltered to an extent
• the size/scale of it, I've not worked on anything this size before

A natural, neglected area 

A view across the Thames to the Millennium Dome

Quite a contrast, glass, steel and tarmac

This is going to be challenging, I need to think big. Having a couple of people in the photo (above) does give the scale to the overall area. I need to sketch out some ideas and get a sense of how the whole space is going to work.

Photoshop

Here are the results of my Photoshop session - this is a first time and a combination of on-line tutorials and a bit of advice from Flik and I really got going. Speeded up considerably just by adding layers and switching them on and off. I need to write down the process as sometimes I missed a step and then couldn't work out why it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.

I can see where the pictures could be improved, more precise cutting around the objects would enhance them, but it was a time limited exercise and I wanted to complete the task of four pictures.

I'm looking forward to learning what else this programme can do, I've looked at some of the other blogs and love some of the effects Phil put on, e.g. transparency - this is going to be a lot of fun.

My mum sat on an elevated step, she would be terrified!

Tiny model... the detail of the hand cutout is not brilliant but I like the overall effect

Hello, hello, hello, a roadblock 

The career ladder

Model Tracing

Here are my traced model scans. The first one I hadn't changed the setting to Black and White and it shows quite a different colour background, a tinge of pink. This was not an experiment, just that I was concentrating on the DPI and forgot about the colour, back to my point the other day of more haste, less speed! The second scan I changed the setting to black and white, but didn't have a 1bit option, it was either 256 greys or thousands of greys, I went for the lower number. Both scans were set on 400dpi.

One is in outline only and the 2nd one I added some form and texture with a bit of cross-hatching.

I've also found that uploading large scans takes quite a while (why are scanned images so large?) so I have been opening them in Picasa and exporting them to a file, it reduces their file size so they load more quickly, but I don't know if it impacts on the quality of the scan - something for me to find out. 

Traced model scanned with 400dpi but setting not changed to B&W

Sketched in traced model scanned with 400dpi in black and white

I then decided I ought to try to import it to Photoshop and have a little play before I start with the 2nd task. I opened a file, created a layer and got the picture onto the layer. Then, BIG THANK YOU to Russell who showed me magic wand and transform. I removed the surrounding trace and am left with just the outline of the model, I then changed its size. I think this is going to be fun.

Traced model, edited in Photoshop

Sequential Sketches

I'm posting these for the record - things can only get better  - and I'm sure they will; I can look and see what's wrong with these and am telling myself more haste, less speed. Look at what I'm drawing and follow the lines, I can do it better when I slow down so that means practice, practice, practice

1st attempt - Sequential sketching

Sketches

Here are my 8 sketches using different media. I took longer than the 2 mins, partly because I enjoyed doing them sat in the sunshine but also because my very quick sketching is poor - I know that's the whole reason for the exercise  - and so I'm practising quick sketches. Yesterday was good practice following Paula round the building, although my efforts were poor, I can look at what I do and see where it went wrong and that is a pretty good step forward.

I really like charcoal but not in such a small scale, on big A3 sheets it is quite fun and very versatile. I like the fineness of the technical pen in this small space. My sketchbook isn't very water friendly so the water colour is more of a coloured pencil. I'll buy a different sketchbook next time with less absorbent paper as the water soluble graphite is lovely to use, very quickly you can get good shading effects. I do use other paper and staple it in to the sketchbook.

The scan has missed the right hand edge, it's because the book doesn't lie flat, need to remember that.

Clockwise from top left: technical pen, soft graphite pencil, felt tip, biro, lead pencil, watercolour pencils, charcoal, crayon 

Garden History

Really good feeling to get one part of an assignment done. It was a bit of fun dressing up. I find the history really interesting  (unlike when I was at school) now I'm fascinated by it all.
The 5 mins presentation went really quickly; with the questions and answers it was good that Tom added to the information. I've added some pictures just for the record!

The expert historian can't believe Cleopatra turned up to his class

Cleopatra looking quite serious

Why am I the only one with a serpent headress?