Looking at Dhaval's sketch (or seeing him sketching), I feel we at the end of five years have internalized the art of sketching. We use one stick/medium in different ways to bring out different characters of lines. This in turn suggests a variety of materials and textures that the real space is made up of. In twisting turning the pencils or pens, we make it interact with the paper in a variety of ways. This sometimes generates interesting effects. This stylization in our drawing using limited mediums is the forte of an experienced sketcher.
Another aspect is framing one's drawing or choosing to ignore what is not to become the content of the image. The sketcher, more than depicting the reality must bring out the feel or essence of the space or object he/she is sketching. An architectural sketch is often a personal analysis. It must bring out, the essential character of the space the architect perceives.
This is often ignored in the elementary and intermediate drawing classes that are held during primary / secondary school days. The obsession with depicting reality is a preoccupation of the past - the renaissance period which was soon obliterated by the invent of the camera. The pursuit of sketching at its heart has always remained to observe, but the whole act of observation has taken an intellectual meaning in the modern age. This intellectualism, one feels, must reflect in what we draw today. But this calls for two things to happen - one, that you possess drawing skill; and two that you have a heightened sense of observation or understanding the surrounds. But another important skill one needs to possess is the ability to translate the intellectual observation into a drawing. Or, to make a prolific (intellectually skilled) drawing.
To take the example of Dhaval's drawings: he drew a balloon with a very soft hand - that emphasized on one part of the curve, a shadow through increasing pressure and density of line while made the line lighter and non existent on the opposite side. This made the balloon look floating and in tension. When he drew the cylindrical country tiles in elevation of a building, he kept balancing the pressure of the pencil in a way which brought out the curve of the tiles. When he draws out a perspective, he knows the details to put in.
Most students who come to architecture come with a heavy baggage of the elementary drawing classes. Actually it helps to be trained, but it is impediment for ways of seeing. They do not understand line intensities and that those can help conveying expressions. What voice modulation does in speech, line intensity does that in drawing. Exactly that is that the students have to understand. I have seen mostly that students draw caricatures / caricaturist drawings - where flat lines define form and content. I was explaining the student the other day how caricature is a medium for the masses, and it has to therefore flatten a lot of expression. A lot of such techniques result into mundane drawings because drawing techniques have been codified (institutionalized) into step by step kind of teaching methods / learn it yourself sketching books, which one can find every where. However, this is not to say that those are bad, but these books have to spell out that techniques are only methods, and tools have to be further explored by those who wish to develop their own ways of working.
As architects, we can not draw flat. Flatness has become the trend of drawings today. Very few teachers in graphics understand tonality and expression. The flatness in technical drawings has resulted into flat buildings and flat understanding of objects and built environments. It is therefore, that we draw a mundane skyline (a zigzag line - check images below) as a representative of the city. This does two things:
1. Gives an impression that skyline is a line of the buildings lying on the face
2. That the face is important and it must have a shape.
The problem with the above is that it ignores that:
1. Skyline is a photographic feature - that it is extracted from a photograph which is a two dimensional medium (even we see in two dimension)
2. That the skyline is essentially a layered set of buildings.
The flatness forgets the layers and results into viewing and intervention in the city as a flat enterprise.
Dhaval never draws flat. He brings out the tonality of a drawing very essentially. I shall request him to send over some of his drawings to publish here. And I shall try to put more examples of what I am trying to communicate.
Another aspect is framing one's drawing or choosing to ignore what is not to become the content of the image. The sketcher, more than depicting the reality must bring out the feel or essence of the space or object he/she is sketching. An architectural sketch is often a personal analysis. It must bring out, the essential character of the space the architect perceives.
This is often ignored in the elementary and intermediate drawing classes that are held during primary / secondary school days. The obsession with depicting reality is a preoccupation of the past - the renaissance period which was soon obliterated by the invent of the camera. The pursuit of sketching at its heart has always remained to observe, but the whole act of observation has taken an intellectual meaning in the modern age. This intellectualism, one feels, must reflect in what we draw today. But this calls for two things to happen - one, that you possess drawing skill; and two that you have a heightened sense of observation or understanding the surrounds. But another important skill one needs to possess is the ability to translate the intellectual observation into a drawing. Or, to make a prolific (intellectually skilled) drawing.
To take the example of Dhaval's drawings: he drew a balloon with a very soft hand - that emphasized on one part of the curve, a shadow through increasing pressure and density of line while made the line lighter and non existent on the opposite side. This made the balloon look floating and in tension. When he drew the cylindrical country tiles in elevation of a building, he kept balancing the pressure of the pencil in a way which brought out the curve of the tiles. When he draws out a perspective, he knows the details to put in.
Most students who come to architecture come with a heavy baggage of the elementary drawing classes. Actually it helps to be trained, but it is impediment for ways of seeing. They do not understand line intensities and that those can help conveying expressions. What voice modulation does in speech, line intensity does that in drawing. Exactly that is that the students have to understand. I have seen mostly that students draw caricatures / caricaturist drawings - where flat lines define form and content. I was explaining the student the other day how caricature is a medium for the masses, and it has to therefore flatten a lot of expression. A lot of such techniques result into mundane drawings because drawing techniques have been codified (institutionalized) into step by step kind of teaching methods / learn it yourself sketching books, which one can find every where. However, this is not to say that those are bad, but these books have to spell out that techniques are only methods, and tools have to be further explored by those who wish to develop their own ways of working.
As architects, we can not draw flat. Flatness has become the trend of drawings today. Very few teachers in graphics understand tonality and expression. The flatness in technical drawings has resulted into flat buildings and flat understanding of objects and built environments. It is therefore, that we draw a mundane skyline (a zigzag line - check images below) as a representative of the city. This does two things:
1. Gives an impression that skyline is a line of the buildings lying on the face
2. That the face is important and it must have a shape.
The problem with the above is that it ignores that:
1. Skyline is a photographic feature - that it is extracted from a photograph which is a two dimensional medium (even we see in two dimension)
2. That the skyline is essentially a layered set of buildings.
The flatness forgets the layers and results into viewing and intervention in the city as a flat enterprise.
Dhaval never draws flat. He brings out the tonality of a drawing very essentially. I shall request him to send over some of his drawings to publish here. And I shall try to put more examples of what I am trying to communicate.
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