A Tree in Southern Africa

I was sent an email of a tree in Southern Africa which has had some carvings added to it.  It didn't say who it was done by but impressive all the same.

Drainage Plan

Having never produced a drainage plan and, as far as I can remember, not having been taught how (unless I was asleep for that one), here is my attempt.  The only thing that I can think of is that the rain water will flow to the bottom irrespective of what we design to go in the way so I would include drainage gullies at the top and bottom of the steps, I would allow water to flow into the pools and would collect water from the roof of the restaurant to be used to irrigate the two Lissitzky gardens.

There would be an attenuation tank towards the bottom of the park to allow water to seep into the water table and to avoid the present problem of waterlogging.

Did someone mention 1:50?

ring, ring...ring,ring...

...hello?

Am I what?


Am I washing the soiled bedding?


Oh, am I watching the Royal Wedding.  Is there a Royal Wedding? I hadn't heard, why who's it between?


Miriam and Kate!  Is it one of those Civil Ceremonies?  Oh, William and Kate...


Are we having a street party.  No why, is there something to celebrate?


No, I'm afraid I won't be watching it.  That reminds me, I've got to go, I've got to go and stick pins in my eyes...

Here We Go Then...

A life's work...Ok then, a few weeks but it felt like a lifetime!  Thanks to Miss Willmott of Willmott Ford Garden Designers of Distinction I've finally worked out how to make Jpegs small enough to upload.  For some reason it doesn't like Jpegs that are about 700mb.

I realise there will be many things that will need to be changed and that after being printed next Wednesday it will all be chip paper by the afternoon, but its a start.  I decided to use skylines from Calverley Grounds as a backdrop and most of it is rendered by pencil and cropped into place in Photoshop, line drawing in Autocad, text in Indesign, sartorial elegance by Gucci.

Still Plugging Away...

Yep, still plugging away...

If I don't get given a few million quid to produce this plan somewhere I'm gonna be a bit miffed! Not saying that it is deserving of being reproduced anywhere but I think you all know what I mean.  There should be a rather large pot of money around and large areas where these designs can be reproduced just so that we can walk through our creations. We could site them next to the dome and when they've been standing for a year we can either sell them for £1 to a venture capitalist company or rip them down so that the following year's 3rd years can reproduce their designs...or maybe they could just remain as figments of our imaginations.  


Anyway, here are a few of my sequential sketches.

                            

1:200 Plan

This is a screen print of my fully rendered and finished (I am not revisiting this!) 1:200 plan.  

I am only putting it on so those who are concerned can see any (if there is any) progression. I have had to screen print it as I think it is too big to load in any other way.  

I hope it is what is required, it has taken days what with the using of my new pencils to do the colour swatches and then cropping them in Photoshop to the relevant sizes around all of the planters in the gardens.  The colour for the herbaceous borders was done with a toothbrush and watercolour paints to get some splatter marks in my sketch book then scanned and Photoshopped.

There is definitely a difference from my previous efforts, more colourful with more depth I feel. If you see any mistakes, keep it to yourself as I want to tick this one off!

By the way, am I the only one blogging at the moment?  Come on chaps it only takes a couple of minutes and it'd be nice to see what everyone else is up to.

New Pencils

Ah holidays!  Days spent lounging in the sun, tending one's prize blooms whilst soaking up the atmosphere of beautiful early spring days, the evenings getting longer...

Yeah right!  Days spent sitting in the dark in front of a computer more like!  I've finally done what I was told to do (for once) and invested in some lovely new pencils.  Caran D'ache Prismalos don't you know.  Very posh.  I'll be sitting in my smock in the middle of a field with my etchings before long.  Maybe not, but at least I won't be able to blame my tools any longer, any failings will definitely be on my part.

Anyway, I have rendered over my sponge water colour trees with my funky new pencils and I have spent the best part of 8 hours putting into Photoshop scaling and rescaling, sizing and resizing, and generally faffing about trying to make it look half decent because I won't be revisiting these ever again, do you hear me?  This is it, final, last time, never to be repeated, I'll take whatever I'm given!

And my drawing hand hurts and keeps going numb cos I took a whack when playing hockey on Sunday, and you think you've got problems...

Plagued

Does anyone out there know what this little beauty is?  I probably should know and its probably very common but I'd appreciate any names.  It was lovely about 2 years ago, a nice little drift of tall plants about 1.2m high, small pinkish flowers turning into fluffy seed heads, what an addition I thought...
Now it turns up where it wants, through 2 Stipa giganteas and now even through the lawn.  I am plagued.  Even trying to dig it up is a nightmare as it goes quite deep and seems to spread through its roots.  So any help will be much appreciated.
Onwards and upwards...

Photo Montages 2

Some more photo montages.  I have used original photos that I took when we visited Calverley Grounds for the background trees and sky, and added people and water in Photoshop.  They will need some extra shadowing once they have been printed off but its a start.  Now, I really should get on with something else...

Photo Montages

 A view in one of the top gardens with Alick relaxing

Another image of the same garden

These are my first (and last) attempts at doing photo montages.  The people have been inserted using Photoshop, as has the background which is taken from a photo taken at Calverley Grounds.  I used these rather than trying to create anything new as I thought it would look better.  The brown moss is used to create form where planting beds would be, not to show specific plants (hopefully not everything I plant will turn brown!).

We have to include a sheet of photo montages but I don't know how many we have to do so if anyone knows could they let me know, thanks.

I've just looked at the task list and its not funny.  Still, one thing at a time.

Le modèle est terminé!

Enfin...
At long last I've finished my model.  About 20-25 hours over 6 days, is that a bit too long for something that is a very small part of the overall project?  Hopefully though now you can all see what I'm trying to do.  
The brown moss is from our kitchen roof and is to signify the planting areas and the sedum roof of the restaurant, the sponges are various species of trees and the oasis foam is either columns of Pyrus salicifolia of pleached Holm oaks, Quercus ilex.
Now I need to take more photos and put people into the model in Photoshop.  Luckily its a sunny day!