The smugness of getting something in the post early.

Not to sound like a 5 year old, but I'm really excited about Christmas this year. Alot more that I usually am. I think the reason for this is there are no big hurdles standing in the way. There are no final crits, no bits of dissertation to submit, no bits of coursework. Nothing.

This has given me plenty of time to think about Christmas cards. I actually got the idea from a three year old who did the same thing but I've made it my own. It started with a drawing of a reindeer, which upon reflection looks a bit like a cow.

Then there was a hand print. Warm blue, warm yellow, warm red and a spot of burnt umber were my colours of choice.
And another... but without the burnt umber.

And then the whole thing had a trip though Photoshop and inDesign and I had that nice smug feeling I'd sent my cards off good and early.

A busy start to December...

I was having a sort out and decided to sell a few books on eBay and I came across one of house plans that I'd used for my dissertation. I got a few books listed on eBay but spent most my time over a few days studying some of the plans I hadn't looked at before. There are a few lovely gestures in them and are very satisfying things to draw!

How big should I draw? I was given "Drawing for the artistically undiscovered" as a birthday present. I think this is suitable having only 2 followers to my blog. It's a bit of fun. Maybe more of this will come later.

Winchester, London and the Sage

The last couple of weeks have been full of lots of adventures in Winchester and London and last night we had a family trip to see the Halle Orchestra at the Sage.

While in Winchester, Megan took me to Roche Court which is a lovely sculpture garden and gallery.

I've been neglecting my sketchbook a bit which is naughty of me but I think it's the rain- I'm becoming a fair weather sketcher...

Days 14, 15, 16 and 17.

Day 16: The Laing Art gallery on a rainy lunch break from tutoring.

Day 17: The North Terrace pub... the local...

Day 14: Six at the Baltic sits on the roof and seems to float over the gallery space below to allow light through. It was a dark wet evening and we were sat on the south side so no nice river views, just the awful blocks of flat. Exciting structure

Day 15: Family walk on the Northumberland coast.

Day 12 and 13.

A bit of thinking about design and life drawing over the last two days.

Posting every other day seems a little easier on the already tense relationship between myself and the scanner and I only have to move the big pile of books and papers on top of every other day. Everyone's happy!

Day 10 and 11.

Day 10.

Day 11.

Next week I'm doing some tutorials with second year. Their project is to design some student housing so I thought I better check the sites out so I can be of some help. I think this one has alot of potential. Tomorrow will go to the other for a bit of a think.

Day 9 or short legs, long arms day.

Life drawing isn't a strength of mine, I hope it will be in a few months time but until then it's very much a work in progress. I started Schedule one in The Natural way to Draw by Nicolaides. My first drawing is a contour drawing. The rest? Well they're trying to work out what looking is about. I've found my date stamp so I'm happy.

Glasgow.

At the start of October I visited some friends in Glasgow. It was a very cold and wet weekend but I visited Hill House in Helensburgh by Mackintosh. For a ground-breaking piece of architecture, it's really quite similar to a suburban house in it's feel but I guess it just came first. He's said to have done some clever things with light and dark but I think he's just continued the gendering of space that the Georgians were very keen on- read my dissertation in it. The house is owned by the National Trust for Scotland so lovely old ladies talked to me in each room but it did make sneaky photo taking a bit of a challenge.

I stayed with a friend who lives in a tenement building. These are fascinating buildings and make the Tyneside flat look like its provincial little cousin. It's such a shame we don't have any in Newcastle. The ground floor flat has it's own grand entrance in the center of the block and a patch of garden while the others are accessed from a rather plain looking entrance to the side. This leads into a top lit staircase. Sam's was beautifully tiled in rich greens and off each landing were two flats. Strangely each flat had two front doors, one after the other, not like a porch or a draught lobby, but outer very heavy wooden doors with fierce looking metal bars to lock it and then the inner front door was one you would probably find on a nice Edwardian house. It made me wonder what the mean streets of the West End were like at night!

Today's been a busy day, I haven't managed to get a drawing done, sorry!

05_02_09 Some photos found and added.

day 7.

Day seven:

The Former Tyne Steam Shipping Company Offices, The Quayside. Johnson, 1875.

I'd say this is probably one of the most exciting buildings in Newcastle and it's probably no more than 4m wide. I always thought it was much older than it actually it but it's still very nice.

Day 6.

Day six:

Today I went down to the Baltic with my sketchbook. My main reason for going was to buy a few birthday presents for a couple of people but as I was there I thought I may as well have a look around.

Martin Parr and Kimsooja were both very good. I only saw the ground floor of Parr's photographs as I didn't have much time and wanted to save the other floor for a later date (got to ration out the fun in these long days of unemployment). Kimsooja's films are really interesting. There's a point in the Indian film I think where a TV crew arrive to film her making her film. I'm not here to write reviews but I will say it's worth a look.

Life drawing.

At the practice I worked at last summer, we would do an activity every Friday evening and my first week was life drawing. I think these were probably 2 minute drawings.

Day 4.

Day 4:

Durham indoor market sketched from a photograph taken a few weeks ago. Sitting at my desk drawing has produced a slightly tighter style especially with the figures where I've used less lines that my usual amount.

I've started to enjoy drawing with pencil again and am going to start tackling people with the help of The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicholaides who has a number of drawing exercises lasting three hours. I might complete them all if I don't get an architecture job soon!

Day 3.

Day 3:

While at the Graninger Market yesterday I got over excited by the cheap figs and pomegranates and ended up buying lots of them. I got a Moro cook book for my birthday and there was a recipe for a pomegranate granizado so I'm going to make that tonight. Today, there were 2 figs left after we had the rest baked last night with honey and greek yogurt.

I've played with this sketch a bit. It only took a few minutes, I scanned it and it appeared in Photoshop so that's where the colour came from. I went through several versions and decided less colour is best.

Day 2.

Day two:

Central Arcade

Day 1.

Day one:

The greenhouse at Wallington.

The light brown pen works well in the sketchbook but not so well scanned.