Draw-It! Week 1 Class

Sketches

The first class exercise for the new module Draw-It! was to draw some sketches of two elevations, a section and a perspective (all in scale) of the first Model-It! class exercise: the joint houses. This new module is to explore various ways of drawing and rendering buildings, how to use it to communicate various aspects, and to learn areas of drawing such as scale and conventions.

I quite enjoyed the free movements of sketchiness, and extended this freedom in drawing each view at different angles (i.e. not necessariliy parallel to the edges of the paper). The drawings were also done on bakers paper as they were just preliminary drawings, and partly because its inexpensive. I enjoyed working with this paper- it felt nice both to move and under my pencils, but also, because it was inexpensive, you didn't have to worry about making too many mistakes so you could just focus on quick works.

(left) My initial attempt at an elevation. (right) My revised elevation

My main challenge was correctly drawing the elevation, as I was initially unconsciously drawing a perspective. It was particularly difficult to draw an elevation because my top house was at an angle, making any elevation look like a perspective. As a result, my first 'elevation' was a mix of both elevation (for the front house) and perspective (for the top house).
After much revision, the only way of fixing the elevation was to draw the roof more correctly, however the rest of the model was unchanged.

Second Elevation

One of the techniques I learnt is to shade objects that are closer darker. This gives depth to elevations (and especially perspectives) and works with the idea of drawing more detail at close distances.
The closer surface can also be outlined thicker for the same effect, and to give a focus to the drawing.




The section for the double house was comparatively simple, as there was nothing inside the houses that I cut through. To challenge myself, I made the cut through a window, and not along the ridge of the roof so that I had to consider more where the roof changed angles and how to represent the window.

Section drawing

The next task for the day way to sketch the plans/elevations given for our given house. My chosen house for this module was Glenn Murcutt's Magney House, which has a beautiful and open design.

Garage side and view of the back

Kitchen and view through the corridor
through the entire house

Light through the
shutters 

Front view

The beauty of Murcutt's design is how light the entire building is, due to the extensive windows and open shutters. The curved roof serves as a drainage system, with water carried to either end of the building and down the pipes. Internally, even when there is a solid wall there are glass panes above the wall reaching to the roof, which gives a sense of connection throughout the whole length of the building, and helps in the feeling of openness.

Sketch of the floor plan and front elevation

In my sketches, I wanted to focus on just the walls, and accentuate the continuity of the corridor in the floor plan. It was quite difficult to read the plan at times, as there were lines which were unclear as to whether they were a wall, a guideline, or a window. All glass walls I wanted to draw either lighter, or as a dashed line, so that it was clear what spaces were the most open (as oppose to focusing on circulation).

The elevations I also tried to keep light, however it was difficult to give a sense of transparency when drawing the shutters, as they seemed like solid sheets of corrugated iron. The thicker-drawn poles do slightly  deter a viewer from seeing the shutters just as heavily.