Blind Contours

Here are a bunch of blind contours I did for class this past week, in all their gimpy glory. I've always found these an enjoyable exercise, but this is the first time I'm trying to make them better somehow, paying closer attention to the details and link between sight and hand movement.

Sketch Class Final Project

The final project for my design sketching class was to produce a product idea and present it with several sheets in ink and grey marker.

My product is a massage chair inspired by the form of a lava lamp. The chair has a bulbous, organic form, sitting on a conical metal base. This would mainly be targeted at an older nostalgic audience, as well as a 20-ish stoner audience. Bam. Stoned phone orders. "Dude . . . the chair is like . . . moving."

The idea is to have the motion of the swiveling chair charge a battery for the massaging action. Whether or not that would work in real life is another issue, reserved for "engineering." Heh. In any case, please take a look, and leave me some crits/comments.

Ideation












3 Views












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Magazine Ad


















Commercial Storyboard

Huntington Gardens

For class on Saturday we went to the Huntington Gardens to sketch outdoor scenery. I'd never been, and despite the heat, I enjoyed walking around and looking at the different gardens and buildings there. Definitely need another shot at that place, and if you get the chance to check it out, I recommend it highly.
I'm not terribly pleased with my sketches from that day, but it was instructional and helpful if only because of the effort and action put into drawing; like so many things in life, the point is the process, and not necessarily the end result. At least that's what I tell myself when I look at these.
Trees outside the main house

Trellis covered path in the rose garden. Perspective's off. Bah.

Lion chair

Tree covered with other tree stuff in the Jungle Garden. This is my favorite of the bunch. It looked like the tree was being taken over by parasitic growths, but still standing. I've forgotten too much of high school biology to know if that's actually the case, but it sounds dramatic enough.

Poorly done Chinese Garden drawing. Those goddamn roofs are deceptively hard to draw.


After completing some drawings, I had about an hour to walk around before closing, so I went into some exhibits. The main house holds European art, which I found out later after looking it up. They had lots of furniture, sculptures, and a lot lot lot of portraiture. Gainsborough stands out in my memory, as they have the Blue Boy there.
And there was this middle aged woman there explaining the pictures to her companion: "It seems there's a distance between the couple, but he's trying to bridge it." When I passed by them I swear I could smell liquor. Some say that's how you do it, but I just can't fathom drinking in that heat at 4 in the afternoon, but to each their own.
Strangely enough, I found myself drawn to a small collection of watercolors they had up. And the furniture and sculptures. It's strange because I have a difficult time with watercolors and I've been averse to 3-dimensional art in the past. Not that I didn't like those media, but I found them frustrating to work with. Perhaps that's the root of my interest in them in galleries. Envy of some sort.

I took a picture of this cool end table in the art gallery in what was the Huntington house. I guess it still is the Huntington house. In any case, I like it.

The placard said something about incorporating Japanese design in the shelving, but what would I know.
There were also some chairs

This is a sussex chair by Morris & Company from ~1870

And another from 1880. Looks comfy. I took pictures of the placards for the last two. That's how I know what they are, teehee.

Right now I'm recording to my laptop from vinyl, and am getting a lot of noise, like an electric hum. It's pretty annoying. Recording from the audio out on my amplifier to the line in on my computer and recording to Cakewalk. Fucking technology.

Car

The other week in class we worked with cylinders and converging lines to construct cars. I'd be lying if I said this was the first car I've drawn, but it's definitely among the first that actually came out kind of looking like a car. We traced ellipses and converging lines off of a photo, then used them as construction lines for our own car. Some people drew BMWs and Corvettes, I drew a beater. First one in pencil, second one in ballpoint.

I pose a question to the photoshop-literate: I am scanning 11"x17" paper on a letter size scanner, so I do it in two parts. From there, I bring them into photoshop, align them as two layers in a single file, and mess with the levels and contrast/brightness. Is there a trick to this, so I don't get that dark line where you can see the division between the two scans?

I'm thinking I'll play around with these in the digital realm later. And upload more scans, but now I am le tired. Criticism and commenting is encouraged. g'night.

Sketches

I'm currently taking two classes at Pasadena City College: an introductory drafting class and a design sketching class. Both have been very informative and I've been enjoying my time in them, though I'm still getting used to having homework assignments again. Here are some sketches from class, hopefully we will see improvement in the future.

sketchbook assignments, pen:


big ups to dental hygiene

in-class shiny objects, pen on marker paper