Sketching for Environment - Organics

Hey, just wanted to post a few sketches from this week. A bit more value action now, and some organics. I believe the class is teaching me a lot about how to approach an environment,

Ed mentioned that I should generalize the shape of the palm on the left more.

This was castle green from the mini field trip prior. These palms are much more generalized, and I'm happy with the tonal distribution.

These are a couple more that I feel like taught me a few things.

 Here's a study of our school, sorry for the distortion when taking the picture. I was happy with this thumbnail, something about the framing appeals to me.

Another value study, trying to focus on conveying the curved surface of this building.

At long last, here's an Indian canyon studie that I introduced some charcoal and wash to.

Sketching for Environment - Research Thumbnails

So this week, we were given a fun little assignment. We drew pieces of paper out of a hat and were paired with 1) a location and 2) a culture.

I drew "Indian" and "Relaxing Canyon". That's South Asia India, not Native American, by the way. We were to attempt three thumbnails with no research whatsoever, then draw 12 more after research.
Here are my first attempts at the topic.

These really highlight the fact that I honestly don't know much about India. Just look at that ridiculous buddha-esque figure...

After the research, here's a collage of images that impacted my thumbnails the most...

When trying desperately to scour the rather flat land of India for canyons, I honed in on what seems to be the bottom parts of the Himalayan mountain range that covers a lot of South Asia. This is in Northern India, which seems to have a lower population density and a lot of water, both from mountainous runoff from the north, and from the southern storms. Therefore it seemed like a good idea to capitalize on the solitude and on the serenity of the water to convey the feeling of relaxation.

I ran into a couple of drawbacks. First off, a relaxing canyon in India is typically devoid of people, and therefore practically devoid of any cultural aesthetic that would make it feel Indian. At the time, I wanted to go for something as accurate to my research as possible, but in retrospect I should have taken more liberties. I also wish that I had a better approach for mountainsides covered in trees... Not sure how to convey that detail or scale. I still had a good time with this assignment, and I think I'd like to push it further in the next stage with a closer-in shot.

This assignment helped me pick up acute differences in environments in certain areas. A mountain range is a mountain range, but they do look a bit different in South Asia than in the ol' USA. Stay tuned for more.

Sketching for Environment - Extreme Angles

Wow, it's been a while since I've gotten to post. Very busy at work with a new job that features a pretty famous person I'm not allowed to name... Anyway, this was a sort of catch up week. So at long last, here are some sketches I never got around to posting.

First I'd like to post the studies I did of the Bradbury building, plus some sketches of LA's Grand Central Market. It was cool to go here with my class. What a complex structure! Most of my drawings of it were dedicated to understanding it; the detail may come later.

A shot of the market for an idea of where we went.

After that, we headed to the Bradbury to introduce the concept of even more extreme angles. This is a fantastically complicated building. I found the stairs very interesting.

Here's a shot of the interior for reference.

This last shot is one that I would like to refine in the coming weeks. It contains a lot of information and I feel that it will be a challenge.

Next I headed to the Pasadena auditorium. This was a fun group of buildings, I practiced wide shots here.

Last of all, I headed to the Burbank Mall. Ed pointed out that the circular structure of the interior would serve to help with my repurposing assignment later in the semester.

 The above shots are from the balcony of the mall, drawing the street outside. Cars have got to be one of the hardest things to draw. It was also tricky to sell the hills on the landscape, since they weren't very steep.

This last shot would be a fun shot to refine. I wish the curves were straighter and cleaner, but I feel like I captured the multiple tiers that exist in the building.

Sketching for Environment - Some more work from last week

So this week was unique in that it allowed me to push my imagination. This is a bit of a late post, but things have been busy at the office lately. So here goes! My building was troublesome; it has no real interior, and therefore it isn't the exterior of any interior... it was more of just a monument. So I decided to build up a museum of science around it, seeing as it honors space exploration and aviation already.

These were my interiors, using the Portal of the Folded Wings as the centerpiece. It was fun to work with curves and rounded shapes, which complimented the architecture of the original building. I would love to visit this museum.

The exterior was even trickier, but I used the limitations of the surrounding landscape as a guide.

And finally, here is my detail drawing on 8x10 of my previous assignment. I picked a wide shot that displayed both the shrine and the space shuttle model, since both were interesting to me.

Here's my original thumbnail. First I printed it out on large paper...

 I used a foreground to background approach to challenge myself to think differently, since I usually like going for the back and then drawing things on top. Here I decided that this tree would be the closest thing to the camera.

 After I had the tree down, it was time to establish the ground plane. It's difficult to see, but here's a grid layer.

Then, it was time for the midground elements. These trees were fun to draw, but I had trouble getting the spaceship to sit on the ground, even though I obeyed my grid.

 My main building was supposed to be a big part of this drawing, even though it serves as kind of a background element. I used my imagination for some of the intricate carvings and even looked at other Italian architecture to inspire me. Don't mind the back of the building, there's some distortion from the paper.

Last of all, I drew a background layer from memory to stop the eye from going too deep, keeping in mind where I wanted to focus the viewer's eye.