Experimenting with trees

For my final assignment I am asked to produce variety of technical and presentational drawings, to prepare for those I have looked up few books and videos on youtube which have helped me draw trees to start with. Further on I will look at textures and other relevant bits.

My logo

I haven't shown my logo to this blog yet, we were asked to design a logo for our projects. I worked on some designs which I wasn't particular happy with. With a help of a logo generator I was able to create this logo. MAD mean Michaels Architectural Design, I have created it in a way that makes it memorable, MAD it a quick reference to my works.

Final assignment

Today we were given our final assignment for this module, submission takes place on week 10. We have to produce 11 drawings for the existing house, what we have at the moment is ground and first floor plan, also a photograph of the building from the front. It's a lot more complicated than the previous house and work load is greater too. We have to produce, site plan, technical and presentational floor plans, roof plan, two section drawings, presentational three dimensional drawing and two elevation drawings. This will be hard but we have plenty of time, its just got to be used wisely.

Visual studies 40% of the final grade review and feedback

Feed back on my final submission has been given to me today and I should receive my grade soon although this will be only 40% of my final grade I take it very seriously, hope to have improved my 75 marks by at least one mark so I am progressing. 

Most critical points on my work was the use of colour in presentational drawings, I was advised to look at existing hand drawings of floor plans and see how the colour is used and what colour codes are within the drawing. I used too much in a high contrast, my drawing ended up looking very loud. Another point was for me to create my own north indication sign, I use a pretty simple N with an arrow which is pretty basic. 

Visual studies assessment

On Monday we have done a six hour assessment that included 4 different drawings, two technical and two presentational. It was quite a challenge, and time management proved to be important. I have completed all the drawings however some were in higher standard than others, simply because I have spent more time on them. Some of my drawings...

This is my sheet of paper, In an six hour assessment I did pretty good, ended up with an A but its an A that I wasn't particularly happy with. My presentational drawing has let me down as I only spent 30 minutes on it. It's a two point perspective that is badly coloured, it's what I missed out on. Now I have a week to go over this again and really put more effort.

Combined assignment

Although we have different modules, they all combine at some point. As for architectural surveying we used a lot of maths to workout the dimensions which were then later used to produce an elevation drawing, technique we learned in Visual Studies but due to the nature of our course we are using what we learned there in our Architectural Surveying assignment.

Elevation drawing of the Vulcan works, I am doing the drawing for the third time right now, technical drawings such as these need to be very precise and accurate, I made few mistakes in previous drawings such as using the fine liner too early, the quality of lines being too thick or thin at some points and inaccurate use of compass. Early in the course I got to understand that in order to be good in this industry I have got to be accurate and produce quality drawings.

Elevations and Section Drawings

The next more advanced and used in the industry drawings we were introduced to are elevation drawings and section drawings. We first started off with drawing the roof for a bungalow, the plan we were given and dimensions were our to decide. So after the roof drawings we went on to do south elevation. I have learned a lot that day in terms of what kind of building drawing there are, how to section a building and also British standards when drawing plan drawings for instance symbols.

 This is my first elevation drawing and roof plan drawing, its almost accurate as I did not include chimneys and did not create the information block the right way, everything was fine except the thickness of the border which should be a lot more thicker. From this we were told to create a section drawing of the building, giving existent layout of the house. I have finally understood how to draw dimensions, my homework was almost right except the dimensions were out of place, now i know how to apply them. This weeks homework is to draw an elevation of Vulcan works building. For surveying we already gathered dimensions of the building. Now its putting them onto the paper in a professional manner, border and information block.

Two point perspective drawings

This technique was an eye opener to how technical I can be when recreating buildings or objects. I was very impressed by this technique as its something that brings a great gratitude. So we started of by using the plan, plan can be gained from orthographic drawings, as I said before the drawings link to each other.

 So you theses are my two point perspective drawings, all of them are technical and all of them originate from plan drawings. To be a little more creative we were told to create a light source on the plan drawings and then apply it in the two point perspective, meaning the
object will create shadow. I am confident with two point although
shadow can be improved, practice, practice practice...

Isometric drawings

 Right after orthographic drawings we were given isometric paper. This was the technique I have been used to, using 30 degree angles on each side, every line remains in its original length or height. It's a pretty good and realistic technique which allowed us to transfer our cube drawings and orthographic projections into a three dimensional drawing. We were given a drawing of a church and some object and were told to recreate it in isometric drawing.

This is perhaps not the most accurate drawing but it's just the start of the learning process, as said before I am quite used to this technique although further practice would be beneficial.

Orthographic projection

This was the very first thing we have learned and we were introduced to different standards in regards of location. Since we could end up working abroad we were told that first angle is used in Britain whereas third angle orthographic projection is used everywhere else around the world. I was always used to drawings in third angle...

This is how I used to draw, which is not the right way to do it and its inaccurate, our lecturer introduced us to tips that make the drawing much more efficient accurate and less time consuming than what I was originally doing. Good thing about the module is that every drawing links to another, well almost but they all are useful when it comes to presenting the drawings and communicating with third parties.

 Here is my attempt at the technique, we were told to create a cube, we did that then we divided it into grids. Our lecturer said put everything in a cube before you draw it. This was helpful as the grids on cube have helped me to identify the dimensions and put it into orthographic projection. It worked both ways first angle and third angle as the cube has six sides. The drawing is planometric on the side, I tried to recreate it in a third dimension. There are also symbols that come with it, those help the viewer to identify in which projection, first angle or third angle the drawing is made. As mentioned before my preference is third angle.

Although is good to know both as it can be beneficial, extra skill that may be needed if I end up working abroad. This links to other drawings such as two point perspective, one point perspective, isometric, planometric and elevation drawings. There was a reason why we learned this at the in week one as it opens a door for other drawings.

Visual Studies homework linked to our assignment...

So today we have been going over our visual studies module as we do on Mondays, After some difficulties with orthographic projection drawings I was finally able to get the technique, only sometimes I got a little confused with first angle and third angle projections. Anyhow so we have been going over some one perspective drawings today which I felt very confident with although the difficulty arrived when we started doing two point perspective drawings. Although we were told how to use the technique to develop technical drawings, I ended up confusing myself, in the end though I managed to get the idea.

So now our drawing techniques come into play with our assignment, just so we get more practise with the techniques we were given homework for next week to produce a orthographic projection drawing of a chosen angle, my choice being third angle as I find it more natural to draw that way anyway. Another drawing we are told to produce is isometric which I'm comfortable with but also one point perspective and the one i need a lot more practise on, two point perspective.

So tomorrow I'm going to meet up with few of my group mates to expand our little project as last week we didn't quite finish, we are meeting up hour before our lecture so that we can have some time developing final bits. Hopefully the structure holds a lot of weight, we will also take a lot of pictures so that we can develop the drawings for next week.

To help guide myself through the homework I have borrowed a book from our library "architectural graphics" by Francis D.K Ching, The book has some really good material, it'll help me to understand the techniques even further.