The sketchbook project

Totally thinking about doing this...

Update: Weeks 2-6 Design Communication Projects

I've been bad at updating on my projects and it's already Week 7, more than halfway through my classes! I've been so busy with them and traveling to Chicago that it's always hard for me to remember to update. It'd be easier if O'hare would just have free wifi since I'm always burning time there anyway but oh well. My last update was pretty much after my first week and nothing interesting was going on in regards to what the class was really about. It's essentially a drafting class "communicating" our "designs." How clever eh? Below are a few pictures of my work. I'll spare you the detail but I'm pretty proud of my work. It focuses more on quality than quantity in elaborate design. And with that thought, I've done really well in the class. Even when I thought OK well here was Week 2: Elevation. Meaning 2D, no perspective, no dimension, just flat. Not bad eh?Then came Week 3: Plan and Elevation. The plan is an overhead view, what you'd see when you want a "layout" of a room. That's actually my bathroom. I have a small bathroom.
Week 4 we killed some peppers. They were red. We had to use peppers to create an orthographic projection and well as explore light logic (shading in regards to light). An orthographic projection starts with the overhead view and then "projects" the side view straight down (See left page). The right page is an orthographic projection of a section of the pepper, both horizontal (top) and vertical (bottom).
Week 5 we started perspective drawing with some exercises not pictured because they're even more uninteresting than you already may find this but this is my blog and not yours. =) Week 6 (pictured below) we started gettin' interesting. It's a one perspective room so unlike elevation, it shows objects in 3D converging at one point in the center.
Decent right? Well this week will be a nice refresher as the next two weeks will be spent on one project with is essentially an accumulation of what we've learned to date using either a bathroom, kitchen, or bedroom. I'm going with the bedroom so hopefully in two weeks I won't have killed myself. It seems I get a bit tired by week 6 and at the same time it gets more difficult...

Next post: Weeks 2-6 of Elements of Design II

Design Week 3

The second project for my design class relates to shape integration and exploring figure/ground relationships, positive and negative space, integration and equivocal space. I thought this project was going to be a bit easier than the first project because she demonstrated most of the project in class and we had a step by step instruction sheet. But it turned out harder in the sense it was difficult to execute. There was actually a lot of thought that had to go into the planning because you couldn't really just "go with it" since it had to achieve certain ideas.

So the first thing I did was choose a serif letter (letters that have feet, except i ended up cutting mine off so you have to give me the benefit of the doubt that it is a serif letter - my teacher did at least) and enlarge it to 10". Then I arranged and traced the letter onto a 6"x9" black piece of paper and cut it out and place it on a 6"x9" piece of bristol paper in the same orientation as it was on the black paper to get the panel 1(left). For panel 2 (right), I took the left over black pieces from the black paper that I cut the letter out of and cemented it to another piece of bristol, ensuring each piece retained its original shape (ie didn't overlap and create a new shape). This was hard because I had to think about how this arrangement would affect panel 3. If I didn't do it right, I wouldn't be able to show the right shape relationships.

To begin panel 3 I traced panel 1 and panel 2 onto the same piece of tracing paper. Looking at the composite (the traced panels), I determined which areas I would make white, black, light grey and dark grey to determine the shape relationships: interpenetration (transparent), overlap, and division.
To create panel 3, I used black, light grey and dark grey cover stock (its like construction paper) and trimmed each piece to the composite pieces. Each piece was cut individually and pieced together like a puzzle to look like panel 1 and panel 2 essentially overlapped each other.
And this is the final result on mat board. Panel 1 demonstrates figure/ground with a black figure on white background. Panel 2 is a figure/ground reversal in which you either see white on black or black on white (I always tend to see black on white but its fairly equal here). Panel 3 is equivocal in which its fairly ambiguous which is the figure and the background. It also demonstrates the shape relationships mentioned above. Can you see them?

BTW last week's project got and A and so did this one! Yay me! I'm not trying to brag but I'm just excited because I was sure I'd be so bad at this class.

Fundamentals Week 3

So this week we had an art project instead of a written assignment for Fundamentals of Interior Design. Our project was to create an 8x10 or larger "portrait" of ourselves using color. We could use any material to help describe ourselves and it would be evaluated by our guest presenter who is a color analyst. So to jog your memory, this is what I left off with last week.


I decided to do a collage using pictures of shoes because well, I love shoes. I went with high heals to describe the difficult journey towards a brighter personality. The left side is my life in accounting. Dark and unhappy. The plaid background represents me, how I like things neat and organized. It moves toward my life that I hope interior design will bring me: bright and happy and much more color balanced.


So in class, we all put up our projects anonymously and the guest presenter said what she thought our projects said about us. Apparently, I am obsessive (all the shoes) and not sensible (they're all heels). I thought this was a color analysis! But she might be a little right, a bit obsessive and not sensible may describe me.

Since I'm running a bit late for my design class, that project update will have to wait until after class.

Another rainy day and projects!

It's another rainy day in Orange County. 4 days of it and there's still another day to go. I actually enjoy it and find it nice since I'm indoors anyway. I could just do without the tornado and flood warnings. I know.. tornadoes? What are those? I can tell you about earthquakes and maybe about the tsunami signs (since I live be the beach), but tornadoes? Not so much. Anyway, here's the stuffed dachshund looking at the rain. The real one does the same thing but almost refuses to pose for pictures so this is her substitute that I bought in Hong Kong. I guess you could consider it the cheap knock off version of the real thing. Hehe.

So this week I've been working on my first Design 1 project. We had to design a piece using implied and inscribed lines to show disorder and chaos. The first thing I learned with this project is that I am not a very good artist. I also learned I over think things.
So here's the sketch preperation for my project. Exploring the use of different sized graphite pencils and black pens.

Exploration of graphite sticks. Similar to the pencils, just thicker.

Exploring ideas for my first project. I had no idea what I was doing.

These sketches are a bit better. My teacher thought the first sketch had potential but needed more emphasis on order and chaos so I worked it a bit more.


We also had to do a little research of artist's uses of line. I chose this piece by Picasso. Hopefully I was able to interpret his use of line ok.

Here is the final piece. It starts with an H graphite pencil and then moves to 2B, 4B, 6B, and then a 4B graphite stick. Hopefully you can see the movement of order to disorder.

Here's a preview of my color analysis project for my interior design class. It's only a preview because that's as far as I've gotten. =)