Shelter|Bus an Unabridged Legacy

With the conclusion of my presentation of my Star|Network Shelter|Bus project I am over come with joy and even still disapointed. I really feel like I didnt accomplish what I wanted to in my presentation, so much useful information had to be cut in order to squeeze everything into the four minute window established to save time. So tonight I regale you with everything including the left out stuff. After weeks of planning and research into the needs of my various clients I found myself leaning towards a series of devices that would assist communication. With this idea I began looking at networks and one stood out to me. The star network, this network of computers uses a single central node in order to connect all the others to the internet or a large office network. This same principle I decided was what I wanted to include in my Shelter|Bus. I wanted the Bus to become a central point that all the victims of hurricanes could go to, in order to get in touch with family, doctors, etc. and locate missing persons.
I realized that as we advance as a society our dependence on technology increases. So much so that every 2 years the amount of data stored on computers doubles. A frightening statistic, it means that in the near future this dependence will cause the community to deteriorate due to our increased introvertedness.
I decided then that the bus would need to serve as a gathering point while at the same time incorporating advanced technology to aid in the recovery process.
The Lack of light pollution in Eastern NC, provides a unique ability to see stars. When grouped together these stars form constellations. Just as constellations find geographic points within the sky, the facial recognition software within my shelter bus is able to locate missing persons.
Movement is inspired by my precedent the TGV 001 High speed locomotive found in France. In order to ease navigation through the space way finding has been implemented with the use of an LED powered lighting system that transitions from Green to orange as they go from public to private. In order to mark the entry ways to the Communications Kiosks and the Missing Person Location system are marked with a blue LED lights as well as a woven wall.
Along with the aforementioned facial recognition software this public area communication devices allow the user to communicate with family members, doctors, or anyone necessary via webcam, email and phone.

The computer within the private area allows the user to adjust the environment to suit their needs. Whether by making the glass opaque so lynn can pray or transparent so that Chi Chi’s bird Col. Clucker can be seen. Similarly to the contemporary computer photos, videos and music can be uploaded to the computer. By simply touching a photo similarly stored images can be accessed.

What I have just done is walked you through some of the major points of my design from the macro to the micro. This same principle is the over arching idea within my shelter bus where communication occurs on a micro and macro level.

Some Details of various bus features

Sketching Away

Right So, been sketching over the past few days trying to get some practice with shading, thicker lines to show depth and just perspective in general that we've been covering in Jake's drawing lecture. So below you'll see 2 of my better results.


This first one I shamefully did while jake was going over perspective so while I guess its bad I was sketching, it was relevant. I think the hatching really helped with this as well I think it looks pretty good and alot better than some of my past work.


This image I did quickly and small because it was shortly before my psycology lecture and thusly I had to make sure that I didnt miss it when he began to speak.

Just a quick post for now, will have a few more things to post shortly though. Patience is a virtue, even if I lack it.

So much work but worth it!

I drew the ceiling the other day I suppose really because it looked intresting and I thought I might as well do a drawing, what more reason could you know.



I went ahead and drew out my final model of the bus shelter, we were discussing it and so I drew it out to I suppose stroke my own ego.



Another idea for a bus shelter I had, it mimics the 3 stained glass windows from the church across the street and is very sculptural to fit into the context of being nearby a museum.



I drew some peoples projects as well and I also having read through "Color Drawing" book I tried to draw the foliage as they recommened and I'm actually pretty impressed with how it turned out.



Quick sketch of what our site looks like from a birds eye perspective. Just so when I went back to work on my models later I could remember about the size things could be before they were running into buildings or streets.

Thats all I really have to show right now, Maybe I'll go out and do some more since everyone I know seems to be off doing something else this weekend.. but then again I can surely use this time to get fully caught up with some of the other million things I have to do in second year. Exhausting but worth it in the end, at least thats what I'm telling myself this for now!

Summer Drawing

Right, I've been away now for.. A long time, a thick layer of dust has settled on my blog, but I'm back and I'm blowing all the dust away.. Now that I'm moved in to my new flat, as well as having a new scanner to scan in drawings I can finally get around to posting all the things I've been working on this summer.

First Up a Sketch of the Building I spent most of my time in, GSRB II on Duke Universities West Campus


A sketch of my once again messy desk, I did this one on a day when it was rainy and so I couldnt really bother to go out to draw unless I you know, wanted to be killed by rain.. But since I do not fancy death by rain I decided not to


Same day, rainy and dreary so I decided to draw the living room, the chair is the only thing I dont like about this drawing but ultimately I think it was to just keep me from being completely rusty when the new term began.



A friend and I decided to enter this drawing thing on a website and the first was to draw your favorite videogame character well I chose Joanna dark from the Game Perfect dark, unfortunately it looks like I did this drawing in the dark so lets just move on..

This drawing I spent 2 days on, really just 2 hours, because thats how long I had for lunch, its the building across from mine, and looks rather like mine, but thats MSRB I or II I cant recall, but it also houses the Human Vaccine Institute so go figure..



This was a drawing I did on my first day of work because they told me they didnt have anything I could do with out a computer and to occupy myself so I sat about and drew for abit...



This is one of the last drawings I did this summer as it was nearly time to move but its a co-worker of mine, hard at work.. I myself was not that hard at work but whatever..

100th Post! and Elsewhere

How appropriate that my post for our project as elsewhere should be the 100th post on my blog! Thats right, must mean I've posted over 100 things that I've been working on over this past, suppose I should look back and reflect but I'll save that for post 101... Anyway, over the last few weeks of my drawing lecture with Suzanne Buchanan we have been drawing the museum Elsewhere in an attempt to map out certain areas of the space. This post will contain all the drawings I have done for elsewhere.

Day one at elsewhere we took 5 sticky notes and selected 5 objects to draw, mind you with our time limit I was only able to get one drawn while I was there.. but here it is

As you can see its a big scary looking mask. It just stuck out amongst the books. So later on I took this same drawing and gave it some color just for the fun of it..

Alas our main objective at elsewhere, was not to just draw, we were supposed to map out spaces we determined with duct tape. Well I'm no cartographer, and if I were I think I would fear mapping out elsewhere, everything gets moved around, constantly. However I did not let that stop me. After 2 days of sketching I had two which I liked, I decided that since elsewhere really is just ALOT of stuff piled up, I really just wanted to show how much you can see from various perspectives. I tried to cram as much stuff on the page as I thought I could with out losing the feeling.


As you can see, the drawings I tried to create a sense for just how tightly packed everything is. If you read the text in the second one you can see just how exhausted I was when I was drawing this, as my thoughts were clearly incoherent.

Using these two drawings I wanted to try something digital for my final drawings. Using the eraser tool and drop shadows I created two very different effects and then threw in some text that I think reflects my final opinions of elsewhere.

This first one I wanted to have a blue with a black outline to really show off the hatching to show light moving around over the objects, I dont think I truly succeeded in this respect but the effect is still really cool to me.

Now my second one I think turned out really good, and I absolutely love the white outlines on some of the edges, again I thought of how light was interacting in the space, and I bent the laws of physics a little bit to get some of the stuff underneath outlined as well but who's judging.

I didnt just fall into those two as my final finals, I had a few other attempts which I will post below, I didnt select due to little things I didnt like about them, but I still feel its good to show my process..

Crit Week: Conclusion

First year Critiques are over! I just finished presenting my work, however I was not just sitting around this week. I drew, quite abit actually so lets begin. Wednesday crits started and I set about to drawing my peers, projects and people



As you can see, I tried to get more people into the view this time, and I think it worked out pretty well. A few proportions out of place but all in all not a bad attempt. I didnt use any measuring technique either, a sign I may be learning to read proportion with out using my pen.

Just a few peoples projects drawn as they appeared on wednesday I've realized that my Micron pen is already running out, it seems odd to me that I should dry out so quickly, does anyone else see this problem or know of a solution?

Fridays, critiques revealed more projects with various curvy shapes. I also drew my initials in what I call Jazz Squares as they strike me as being jazzy. In no offense to others but I dont see curvy shapes when I think about jazz, I see curves just not to an extreme. There is still some geometry to them.

Also like my blue pen? I was getting bored of black and white drawings all the time. So I bought a blue pen to spice things up a little.

Crit Week 2 the revenge of the crit

ITS CRITIQUE WEEK! The week when all the studios gather to judge everyones projects and make judgments to our own beliefs on our designs. Its also a great time to draw, especially when you need practice drawing people.. Big Crowds lots of overlap, it can get hectic (the drawing not the critiques. I got a few good drawings done today, one involving trying to fit everyone in my view into my space on my sketchbook.. I think I was moderately successful..

I think next time I will try to make the people fill up the whole page, just to give those who are reading this the sheer scale. There were probably close to 100 of us in our little tiny critique room. The rain was overpowering our presenters today, it was actually kind of funny, we had to stop for 10 minutes while we waited for a lull in the rain.

Just look at all those people, I myself am impressed with my effort you can really tell that their are alot of people between me and the projects being displayed. Certain people keep getting messed up because they kept fidgeting or someone would lean forward and block my view but I'd already be about half way through the person and not wanting to change the image, so I'd wait and then my subject would have moved anyway. Oh well! Still looks good to me

This is Ben Adam's Project, he designed a very interesting space for Rothko. I originally only intended to draw the project, but then the veil covering the stool it was seated upon began to call me, before I knew it the stool was too, and then the wall... and then the shadows so it pretty much became a whole scene, only his board is missing. I've been working with my markers so much I almost forgot how you can show contrast using just your pen, I was so ready to whip out my cool grays. By the way Suzanne I think you'd agree that the shadows were likely a cool gray number 1 today.. maybe a 2 in the darker spots.

In conclusion, now that I've finished my final project I'm happy to say that I reunite myself with my sketch book and have some fun. This year has been odd. I used to be incredibly bored, I'd simply play video games or talk to my friends. Now I love to go out and draw and look at the world around me. But this post has gone on far to long, and that big world is in need of documenting.

El Careton and more!

Tuesday's class took a little excursion over to El Careton a fantastic place to get a bite to eat and a really good view from which to draw. This was the result of that adventure, as well as a few other drawings that were done earlier or later that day.

So we have here a less than happy looking woman and the Brown Music Building. I must say I think that despite my poor perspective I think it turned out well.. and dots make it look so much better, those dots will make a resurgence in drawings I did later as well..

Now these drawings are not really related to my drawing lecture but they use techniques I've learned from it so up they go..
Firstly we have a drawing of the capital building, I did not go to DC but I still ended up drawing some of its major landmarks, I think it looks pretty good, some scaling errors towards the center with the columns but turned out better than I thought it would.

Also got the Lincoln Memorial Drawn just for good measure, as it is one of the first things people think of when monuments are mentioned.

The Space Between Drawings

These drawings were present on my board however they never really made it off and onto the blog, most of them are from the outside of my assigned building foust. Why outside, well because the interior was rather bland and boring and I enjoyed the exterior well enough to do those instead. Hope you can appreciate them.


The first one of these is very chaotic in a way I can appreciate that, all those lines running around giving it contrast while keeping the form intact.

The second one not so much, mostly because its an interior shot and was in fact about 3 times the size it is now, but was eventually cropped because their just wasn't a whole lot to see.. There is a guy there, guess hes reading something good.. in the corridor.

Truth be told the only one I really even like is the last one, the first one I liked up until I did the third you see before you. The lines just look more precise in all the chaos, like a careful blending of attempted precision while still keeping a loose form to it all. The only other problem I see are my scale figure sizes, they look like children... to small to be university students, they seem better suited to an primary school than a university.

Drawing Haitus

So I havent posted a non academic drawing in a couple of days and so I present to you, my attempt at drawing David Tennant the star of fantastic British Program Doctor Who, note the sonic screw driver in his hand. I can tell from here that the head is a little to small, around the hair region and the pinstripes got really messed up because half way through making them I decided a smaller line weight was needed, but yea enjoy. I think it turned out half good

the image I based this off of is

People Drawings (again)

Not to shabby this time, although I still have what I hate about every single one.
This drawing of my good mate, Zach is okay I guess except I ran out of time to get his face shaded in, which is what I think makes me think the drawing is rubbish since everything else seems to have a certain degree of light and then his face looks like the light source, I thought about just scribbling in some shade but I just couldn't be buggered by it and I also thought that I would only ruin the drawing more.

Now this drawing I guess inst so bad except.... TUMBLING TEXTBOOKS BATMAN! she has no feet, what devious character would steal a persons feet... Oh wait no, I just forgot to draw them, how on earth did I forget to draw her feet, how do you get so absorbed you forget some feet?? I do not know the answer to that question but other than that and her arms lack of shading (again time limits) I would say she turned out pretty good, her face does reflect the light she was receiving and all.

Thats all I have for now, so..

-Cheers!

le corbusier

Could he have a more difficult name, I mean I havnt been this challenged by a name in a long time. Any way I have today some fantastic shading drawings from his work so I hope you all enjoy!



Cheers!