Sketches - Gourds

The following are sketches based on exercises that the first year class are doing in Arch 110. I am helping out and participating in the class and these are the most current. Each student was given the opportunity to select a gourd and then the drawing began:

Draw a circle on your page. Now, turn that circle into the gourd that you selected.

Imagine a larger circle. A circle that surrounds your page. Now, turn that circle into the gourd that you selected. The stepping up of scale made you focus on a different level of detail, and as a result, a different set of lines. You can see a similarity but the shift is evident.


A few gourds fell and were broken so I changed the subject of the sketches but continued with the same exercise.


With this change of scale, more of shift can be seem than in the previous gourd.

The final one from this series was an investigation of my own. I was interested in the interior of the gourd and what make the ridges so pronounced on some. We cut one open to see what was going on. I drew the plan and elevation as a study of that.

Sketches - Washington D.C.

I was away in Washington D.C for a few days and did some sketching. Also, I am going to be experimenting with some different scanning techniques over the next little while and would welcome the feedback.

Thesis - The Cartesian System

According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "The blind, says Descartes, “see with their hands.” The Cartesian concept of vision is modeled after the sense of touch." "For Descartes it is unarguably evident that one can paint only existing things, that their existence consists in being extended, and that design, or line drawing, aline makes painting possible by making the representation of extension possible. Thus painting is only an artifice which presents to our eyes a projection similar to that which the things themselves in ordinary perception would and do inscribe in our eyes. A painting makes us see in the same way in which we actually see the thing itself, even though the thing is absent. Especially it makes us see a space where there is none."

The Cartesian system may not lend itself to painting but it most definitely lends itself to architectural drawing. This is an area that needs more research before I can say more.