It's been a while

So, the past week has been full of movie nights, studio, wood shop, and studying. That didn't leave much time for anything else. Here's a little something that I worked on in wood shop:
The edges are square, I just tried to crop out the background because the picture was a little crooked. Anyway, I made the frame and box myself here. The depth of the bottom is 2", and the depth of the top is 10". The assignment for studio is to design a room for a collector, and we were allowed to choose our client. Mine is a collector of measuring instruments. I decided to focus more on distance and length instruments. This box represents how measuring distance is relative, meaning that distance depends on how each person perceives it. I didn't have enough time to finish this yet, but hopefully it will come together some time in the future. What I like about the box is that it actually looks like the X's go back into the distance.

My professor calls perspective drawings "lies" because really it's just a flat, 2 dimensional piece of paper that slanted lines are drawn on. Here's a collage of some cool sidewalk art pieces that fool the eye into thinking that there's actually depth on a flat surface:

The trick to these is that you have to be looking at them at just the right spot, or else the art will appear horribly distorted. Here's a comparison between looking at a piece from the right and wrong angles:

All at once

So, things have been going pretty quietly for a couple days. I had a couple tests yesterday for GEOG 122 and ART H 201. The geography one was a bit difficult, but the art history one was really easy. The second part of the art history test is an essay due Monday. Also due Monday is my woodshop pencil box, but I'm almost done with that. For VisCom due Tuesday, we were assigned to make perfect perspectives of a home off of the plan and elevations. I'm almost done with that; I just have to trace the final part of it, so no worries there.

And on top of those I have to still do my ARCH 131s things, which is modifying my assigned door and/or the area around it. My plan is to make another door which leads to the Sbarro on the other side of the wall. It will be made of glass, and also I'm going to add a few tables in the outside eating area around my door. To make it more accessible, I will also make an additional path to the eating area because right now it's too hidden from everyone else.

Iowa State football game today! Me and everyone else in my suite don't have tickets so we're probably going to eat some place on College Avenue that has a T.V, which is fine.

A lull

There hasn't been much going on in terms of architecture, but my GEOG 122 and ART H 201 have midterms tomorrow. I got a little study group together for art history and we went over the monuments we need to know. I still have a bit of studying to do though.

For architecture classes, I've been in wood shop in place of ARCH 131s classes (required). We're each making pencil boxes that we won't be able to keep after we finish making them. Other than that, VisCom hasn't assigned anything we have to do at the moment, and I'm set with my ARCH 131s things for now. I know for sure this won't last long though!

Next phase

So, for arch 131s, we've started a new phase of our assignment. The students are to "intervene" on their site and change things around the way they see fit. Once we have our ideas and all, we're supposed to do all our drafts over again showing the changes. Here are a few pictures of what my site/door actually look like:

So, the topmost picture is of my perspective drawing I put up earlier, and the middle picture is of the other perspective drawing I put up. The bottom one is just a nice shot with my door hidden behind some draping plants.

I'm still in what I call the brainstorming phase of the assignment; all these ideas are coming and going and actually visiting the site helped me realize what I can and can't do. I'll probably visit tomorrow as well, even for a little bit. My sketch book is really being used right now as I have filled seven pages in the past two days of just rough sketches and some notes.

For VisCom, I finally finished my temple drawings and here they are:

The upper is the axonometric (axon), and it has a section cut 1/3 the way up the columns, so it shows the naos (inside room) and where each of the columns are placed but still retaining all the correct dimensions. Note: these aren't perspectives because they don't have vanishing points, so they still keep their proportions except when it comes to irregular angles such as the roof on the isometric (bottom). The difference between axon and iso is that axon typically keeps right angles at right angles, and iso widens that angle, to give it the illusion of being more of a perspective. Look closely at the nearest bottom corner and you can tell the difference in angles.

Although it's been a while and these got considerably smudged (a brief photoshop editing session couldn't even make it look nice). The reason for what look like smudges on my other things is because the only table that's low enough for me to take photos on is really marked up. Monday is going to be my section's first trip to the wood shop! I'm excited because I really enjoyed the class in high school.