Model Making

Here is a photo of my supposedly finished 1:200 plan of Calverley Grounds but guess what?  Yep, not finished, needs attention, rendering (if I hear that word one more time...) needs to be better, etc, etc, etc...

So, I thought I'd make my model, you know the one I should have finished 2 weeks ago, alas time caught up with me, too busy keeping Crayola in business.  I got some new tracing paper the other week, it came in enough cardboard to refloat the Mary Rose, so I decided I would use that.

My kitchen has the largest amount of flat space so it has become the model making workshop for Tunbridge Wells Council's new design of a much loved park.

OK then, just another mess on a student's floor!  And worktops.  And draining board!

Its amazing what comes in handy, pegs for holding gluey things together, saw to use as a straight edge when cutting, Stanley knife in case it all becomes a bit too much...

...Actually I'm past all that now.  I was grumpy for a while, now I couldn't give a stuff.  After Monday's performance I shall do my best and just laugh when I get criticised and I have to redo it again.  I drove home on Monday evening full of the joys of spring, as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders because I can't change the way I draw in the next 2 months and now I have come to that conclusion I shall continue merrily on my way until the finish!

By the way, I had a visitor today, someone who was our client for Client & Process last year and he could see the improvement and was quite impressed.  So, next time you're feeling down just remember we are trying to impress the judges for the next 2 months then after that, I'm sure that when you see your first client out in the big bad world, they won't fail to be impressed.

Orchid or Bindweed...

Which are you?

Another Monday, another mauling!

We try our best but obviously its not good enough.  Two months to go then hopefully we'll be free from all of this, but if not we could be back next year...that would be fun!

Some of us are bindweed, we get trodden on, knocked back but still we keep growing, ever present, annoying but stronger for the experience.  

Some, however are not.  They are orchids, if you tread on them they are destroyed, they will not come back, they are unable to grow.  They need care and attention, they need to be encouraged, enticed and nurtured otherwise they will be lost forever.  

Me?  I'm bindweed...

Precedents and Mood

This is my revamped A1 sheet of my precedent and mood images for my redesign of Calverley Grounds.  I hope its what they are looking for cos I'm getting to the stage where I'm getting a bit peeved redoing stuff again and again.  Its costing us £2.20 for each A1 print we do, we pin it up and are told we need to change things so we waste money, ink and paper!  It probably won't be good enough and I'll have to do it again, but we have 2 months left and because we keep redoing stuff we don't have anything finished for the final exhibition.  I'd like to know when we will have something that we can say that's finished and acceptable now we can move on instead of thinking we will have to revisit it again in the final 2 weeks.  Another 2 months and then what...

Another reason for putting this picture on is I'm fed up seeing my arse in a g-string every time I log on!  

Smacked arse!

Yesterday we were all at the University for a crit of our work for the last time at 1:200 unaware that it was a marked crit.  The drawings on the wall didn't look as good as they once did and I agree with the tutors that some of us have gone backwards somewhat.

These thongs are getting a bit tight!

In our defence it is because we are trying to find the best way of rendering our work to make it leap off the wall that for most of last week some of us wasted a huge amount of time trying out Photoshop.  When you keep getting told your work looks crap and uninteresting is it any wonder we still don't know which technique is best?  There are only so many times you can be knocked down before you wonder if it's worth getting up again!  "You draw some trees and scan them into Photoshop" seems to be a mantra going through this uni from previous years, so you try it and they never look as good as when they are in your sketch book!  So for this reason I shall be digging out my children's colouring pencils and using those (that's if I packed them before I came out here to Mars).

Moving to Mars

I've sussed it.  If I move to Mars for the next couple of months I'll have more time to do all this work.

Although one day on Mars is only 39 minutes longer than a day on Earth, there are 687 days on Mars compared to our 365 days.  Therefore, between now and the end of May there will be almost twice as many days on Mars so I'll be able to fit in more work, more time with my family (although we may think this course is important, to some basketball, hockey and dance clubs are more important) and I'll be able to sleep more!  Cos there ain't gonna be enough time otherwise...

See you when I get back!

Officialdom

Business cards and headed paper!  Its getting scary, do I really need all this stuff?  Is there anyone out there who really wants my card? "Here's my card!" can't imagine that ever happening, maybe it will at one of those cheese and wine parties, that I've never been to, that they have in suburbialand with the pampas grass outside.
Its got my name on it and phone number, location, email address...I thought I'd been pretty anonymous up til now, not anymore!!!  
"You know my name, you gave me the ****ing number".

Advance Representation, that's what the lesson is where we produce computer stuff, and next time ladies and gentlemen, we get to produce a CV!  Don't I already have one of those...?

Autocad-love it!

I've gone all 21st century and started to use Autocad.  We're old friends but if truth be told we don't get along all that well.  I'm always nice but the same can't be said for old Cad.  For example, today there I was merrily tapping away when for no reason, all of a sudden Cad decides not to play anymore, takes his toys and buggers off.  Two hours of work up the shoot!  A tip - save your work every few minutes or you'll end up like me redoing something you've just spent ages doing!
Anyway, I got fed up redrawing things by hand and not being satisfied with it so I spent most of last week trying my best with old Cad, we're getting along ok but its a long, slow process.  Should have loads of stuff to show for tomorrow but I haven't.  Hopefully now I've gone all modern and digital things might start picking up soon.

Here's my lighting plan and how it might look, now how do you print to scale again?

Professional Studies

The Garden Designers and others have just finished a document (this year is all about documents and presentations...yawn!) on Sutcliffe Park in Lewisham.  Between us we had to find out about the redevelopment project, who was involved and assess how they performed. We then had to put together a document including a section on how we as a group performed!  After many phone calls and emails to people who sometimes were uninterested or didn't know anything about the project, we eventually found some very helpful people, mainly from the design and construction side of things, so we were able to get it finished.  We had to do a presentation on Monday which seemed to go well, along with a Q & A session.

On the same day we had to hand in a Law Assignment, so we now find ourselves with only 3 of the original 24 subjects left from when we started this course all those years ago.  Scary to think in less than 3 months we will be having our Year 3 exhibition.  Now, where's me Prozac?

Hello Kitty

In Advanced Representation, a computer based lesson, we had to present something from the designed world that inspired us.  Owing to the fact that not a lot in the designed world inspires me I decided to choose Hello Kitty because it certainly inspires my daughter and her friends.  So here it is, Hello Kitty.

Sequential Sketches

                            

I've put on some of my sketches of how Calverley Park could look if Tunbridge Wells Council gave me a few million quid and a free rein.  They are only sketches at this point and over the next few months I'm sure they will be revisited in Photoshop to make them more realistic.
I made a model on Sketchup to get the perspective, then printed off the views I wanted and traced over them.  Then I scanned the traced drawings into Photoshop, added some text and photos, printed them off and rendered them in pencil.
It all seems a bit like chasing your tail doing it this way, especially when we get told that people at the university want the whole course to be computer based!  Anyway, now I think from this point on most of what we do will be computer based in Photoshop or Autocad so that should be fun!
Check out the "American design school" text style, s'pose I'd better not use that again then.