Playing with Curves

Gorgeous oak floor in the new Gagosian gallery, Grosvenor Hill

A close-up

The keystroke for Curves in Photoshop is Control+M. I still don't understand how to use it, but had some fun -

Clicking on the dotted line before clicking elsewhere does ... what exactly? 

At this point it was all getting too complicated, too random...

Radiolaria

(via)

Radiolaria, by Ernest Haeckel (1862); see them all at publicdomainreview.org/collections

And a wire version (2012), by Diane Foug -

See more of her work at www.dianefoug.com

Well done, Trinity Close, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset!

... for raising "tens of thousands of pounds for various charities" - and for putting those lights to good use.

Photo from here; click on each to read the caption, and try not to get annoyed when the caption doesn't give enough information ... usually: where exactly IS that place?

Extended drawing - fourth module - 2D/3D

We had been asked to bring small boxes, and with them to make "a spaceship", in which architectural-scale models (1/50th and 1/100th) would be used to manipulate space, and lighting would be used to enhance or create moods and environments. Photography could be used to create sources for future work or work in its own right. 

My model - in its "photo booth" -

Using photography -

Manipulating space (my only interior - I rather misunderstood this project) -

Creating mood (while juggling the camera and the light, my finger slipped and this photo was taken by chance!) -

 More of the noir -

At the end of the evening, an assembly of models -

In the second session we were introduced to architectural drawing systems (parallel motion drawing - ie, lines don't recede to a point, as in perspective) to support drawing of spaces by imagination -

For some time after the class I went around telling people this strange-looking semi-perspective was called axiomatic drawing - but actually it's called axonometric drawing, and looks distorted but is good for showing as much as possible of the inside of a room. And in looking up the link I find that what I ended up doing is actually isometric drawing!

Using triangular graph paper was a blessed relief after trying to draw - from imagination based on faulty recollection - the domed ceiling of a chapel built in the 1470s in Florence I'd happened to see in a book that morning. (Looking for it on the internet, later, turned up all sorts of wonderful architectural spaces with domes and columns ... something for another day.* Another source, of course, is Piranesi's amazing drawings/engravings.)

The 2D representation I'd seen (photographed pointing straight up) would look very different in 3D, sideways on, but I wasn't sure quite how to put this into "a transparent box" and after a few frustrating minutes, quite quickly moved on to putting pyramids onto graph paper -

After happy hours of moving the boxes and their enclosed pyramids around to enhance the aesthetics of the composition, it was finally possible to ink in the shapes, and to draw a floor plan (on square graph paper) ... only to find that several bases overlapped. Never mind! - you wouldn't know that from the overview; nor would you be aware of the  "plazas" in this "city" -

The tops of the "transparent boxes" in which the pyramids were contained were inscribed into the paper, and the whole sheet rubbed with graphite; those lines were very faint and needed careful thickening with a sliver of eraser, and then some heavy use of the eraser elsewhere -

The spaces between the pyramids got lost during the rearrangements, so I set out to make a drawing with some of those spaces, printing out triangular paper (eg here) and laying on some tracing paper -

Again, lot of erasure -

The "see through" shape shows an earlier version of the floor plan, which is somewhat confusing if you don't know about the history of erasure and repositioning. Hmm, an accidental palimpsest (or is that a tautology?).

Next I wanted to retain the floor plan, or have it somewhat revealed in the final version. At first the grid sat uneasily with the sloping lines -

Later, the bases of the pyramids are only just there, thanks to the dramatic lighting -

What do you think of the open space leading inward? And can you spot the deliberate(?!) mistake?


*Especially the Pazzi Chapel in Florence, eg here.

(via)

Another possibility for the second week was to develop patterns, eg for wallpaper for the inside of the "spaceship" - here are some starting points - Tongan tapa cloth patterns; inuit art patterns; african art patterns; native american patterns. Lots and LOTS of inspiration there!

Keir Smith's sculptures at Henrietta House

Look up in London and you see all sorts of things - for instance, on the facade of an office building just off Oxford Street, these sculptures -

The artist is Keir Smith (1950-2007) - here he is with  his work -

The building was finished in 1992, and you can see good photos of "From the Dark Cave", as the series is known, here. (Some of them could now do with a bit of a cleanup.)

From the obituary: 

The sources for Keir's mature work were based in the art, architecture and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. He was passionate about little-known painters and sculptors as well as the masters, learned Italian and visited Italy regularly.

Keir's writings were extensive, personal, and at times very amusing. He was also somewhat akin to a gentleman pamphleteer, in that each of his later exhibition catalogues, many of which he published, contained his learned essays on the works that inspired him.

Drawing was vital to Keir, not so much as plans for sculpture, but works of tangential subject matter, often worked carefully in pencil and watercolour or made in acrylic over long periods of intense activity. He was never without a sketchbook. Towards the end of his life, during bouts of chemotherapy, unable to sleep at four in the morning, he would walk to the Thames, where he drew and painted the water, bleak compositions with broken wooden poles rising through the surface.

Black and white

A sort of Marimekko dog  ... one of the many that wait patiently outside the store while their owners get some groceries. Or dog food.

And this patchy thing is the cat we'll be looking after while its owners move house - a sort of Franz Kline cat -

... don't you think?

Franz Kline

Marimekko

Poetry Thursday - Gherkin Music by Jo Shapcott

A "poem on the Underground", 2013 (via)

Gherkin Music by Jo Shapcott

walk the spiral                      

                             up out of the pavement

                       into your own reflection, into

transparency, into the space

                                      where flat planes are curves

                and you are transposed

as you go higher into a thought

                                   of flying, joining the game

                    of brilliance and scattering

where fragments of poems,      

                                         words, names fall like glory

                   into the lightwells until

St Mary Axe is burning. 

(Did you notice the self-reflective -ie, spiral- form of the poem, and the fusing of secular and spiritual?)

Published in 2010, the poem captures "the iconic shape of the modernist City building in a celebration of architecture, science, poetry, and music " says this site, where you can read more Poems on the Underground about London.

"Intellectually ambitious and eschewing the personal, Shapcott's poetry nevertheless belongs as much to the body as the mind" says this site. The poet was born in London in 1953, studied at Trinity College Dublin, and has won a heap of literary prizes, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

30 St Mary Axe (via)

Seen but not understood

The scaffolding is coming down from a neighbouring house that's had its windows replaced. The colours of the barrier caught my eye, especially in relation to all the other gridded forms nearby. I pressed the button and captured this person-in-a-hurry.

Can't quite define what made it necessary to take this photo ... something about the curly bits on the gate in relation to the battered paint? The rhythm of the rectangles at the bottom of the photo? The change in scale and direction of the diamond grid? The jarring emphasis of the diagonal plank?

Something unseen ... and a photo needed for analysis, for unpicking of the elements.

Drawing Tuesday - V&A ironwork gallery

The ironwork gallery - so many wonderful things, large and small!

Joyce focussed in on the detail of a screen - looks 1950s, but is 1890s - made by Louis Sullivan for the Chicago Stock Exchange -

 Mags was drawn to a pewter teapot -

Janet K did a blind drawing of this grille by Klaus Walz, 1980, following its line, and then turned to a piece by Guimard, who is best known for his work for the Paris Metro -

 Marina used pencil for drawings of objects and motifs, then superimposed her own interpretations -

 Another teapot, from Janet B -

 I started with locks; this one i based on a 15th century mechanism but with the dragon added about 1900, and then looked at some keys, especially the little labyrinths that made them functional -

At home, some ink made the lock much livelier -

The ironwork gallery has skylights, which makes the reflections situation rather dire for the small items that are displayed under glass. I found it useful to take photos of the keys on my ipad, which could be manoeuvred into as non-reflective a position as possible,

As you can see from this collection of items from the glass cases, cutting out the reflection was tricky, but being able to sit somewhere comfortable and draw from the image on screen was a bit of a luxury.

It was essential, though, to go back and look at the item - the photo doesn't give enough information.

I drew another lock on the ipad, using Brushes - tracing the lines of enough of the lock to be able, later, to draw the whole thing "for real". Some areas were hard to see - and going back to the item for a hard look was "interesting"! An indeterminate splodge in the photo turned out to be something quite unexpected. I added another layer and did the amendments in a different colour -

The layers on the right show the process -