ARCH 29A Portfolio Phillip Le
Drawing I’ve had a long history with art, and specifically, drawing. It was one of the first forms of expression I’ve ever learned and enjoyed working on (sorry, piano.) There’s pictures of me drawing on the wall with markers and boxes of childhood artwork stacked away in the attic at my parents’ house, but all good things must come to an end. As I grew older, drawing had to take a back seat to math and science, and as I entered high school, drawing had all but disappeared in my daily activities. Years passed and now I need to freshen up on drawing. I still have some residual knowledge from my old art classes, but my skills are nowhere near what they use to be. I’ve also kept some old habits that I only now realize hindered my drawing abilities; such as, refusing to rotate the canvas and drawing lines in short, “hairy” strokes rather a single straight line. I am excited to be one again taking a class to refine any skills I might still have regarding drawing and hope to develop a whole new set to help me become a better artist. I see incredible value in freehand drawing and how it can help me to better communicate ideas on the fly. I cannot wait to add this skill into my repitoire!
Week 1: Self Portrait My assign was to draw a self-portrait using the reflection in the mirror as reference. The project seemed easy enough when I started to draw my construction lines. (A bit of knowledge I still remembered) But once it came to anything that wasn’t my face, I couldn’t seem to get it right. My hair was especially hard to visualize. When it came down to drawing it, I just went with scribbles.
Living Space The living space I chose to draw was my bedroom from a standing position because there‘s not much space in my room. I tried my best to get the correct angles of everything and try to work in the detail of my bed. Looking back, I see how construction lines and a vanishing point could help here. Also, I could really use some art on my walls.
Week 2: Line Composition This exercise was tedious, but at the same time freeing. I enjoyed the constraints of each type of line drawing but left space between each set to be able to come back and let loose.
Week 3: Upside-down Drawing This assignment reminded me of an art lesson from my past, but instead of quadrants, we broke a picture down into a smaller grid and would just draw each cell and hope that the end result would look like the initial picture. I found this to be a challenge to visualize because I wanted to try my best to not see the whole image and just focus on drawing the quadrants. I started by just drawing the first and fourth quadrants and then coming back in the to finish the second and third. This was a helpful exercise in breaking up a large project into more manageable sizes.
Week 4: Negative Space - Chair This assignment had me cooling all the negative space around an object without actually drawing the object. I had a lot of difficulty with this piece because I constantly found myself drawing the chair/stool but after breaking it down into quadrants, I found it to be a lot easier.
Hands Building on the previous week’s recreating another piece by breaking it down, this week’s project required us to break a three dimensional object (My left hand) into quadrants and sketching that. The first piece had me looking only at my hand, not at the paper. The idea was to visually trace the object out with my eyes and attempt to reproduce it on paper. This was extremely frustrating to do at the time, but I see the value of it now having to do several quick sketches. The second and third pieces were drawn with the option of looking back at the paper to see pencil placements.
Week 5: Various In-Class Cube Excercises This was a very useful exercise with real world applications. I enjoyed learning about perspective but I would come to learn that although you can get away with drawing a cube with minimal construction lines, a couch is another story.
1 Point Perspective Of A Room I realized the value of construction lines after finishing this piece and the need to draw a lot of them. Although the furniture was close to my vanishing point matched, the pieces further away started to deviate from lining up with my construction lines. I learned that you can never have too many construction lines if you want an accurate drawing.
Week 7: 2 Point Perspective of a Building Exterior I chose the Diego Rivera theater as the subject of this exercise because it has a lot of interning shapes but found it incredibly difficult to draw the theater’s cylindrical entry foyer. Not matter what I did, the shape never aligned correctly. In class, I was given the tip to draw a box first and then cut it down to a cylinder using construction lines on the top and bottom of the box.
Week 8: 8 Different Shading Methods I think that this exercise was one of the most beneficial. Not only did it teach me how to see the different tones of shadows but also showed me how to add dimension to an object. I did learn that I prefer a few methods of shading over others and discovered that although the process of stippling can be annoying, the end result is pretty neat.
Week 9: Household Objects in Tone For this assignment I chose to go with my method of shading and blended it all together with my finger/paper. My chosen objects was a cup, a book, and a lacrosse ball. Upon studying the composition, I really saw all the different tone appear. Of note, the light reflecting off the white lacrosse ball onto the book.
Week 10: Portrait of Helen Sears in Tone I have never drawn anything in this fashion before. The concept of subtracting was so foreign to me, but after working on it for a few iterations, I finally began to understand this method of drawing and was able to see the light areas of the drawing as shapes sans details. After I was able to get that right, I returned and added details; although, now that I look back on it, I wish I had did a better job with blending the facial features.
Week 11-12: CCSF Campus in Tone This project was hands down the most intimidating project of the semester. Not only did I have to draw a huge picture in tone, but I took on extra credit and volunteered to do two more. Each piece had to match up with my neighbors, not only with objects in the picture but the shade and tone as well. I psyched myself out thinking the scope of the project was too big, but after sectioning off each piece with construction lines and a grid; I took things slowly and everything just fell into place!
Week 13 - 14: Self Portrait in Tone I decided to approach my self-portrait the same way I did the portrait of Helen Sears. I really liked this method of illustration and fell in love with the sheer amount of drama this produces. I used a Rembrandt lighting scheme which washed out half my face but gave me great, deep shadows on the other side. I loved that I was able to full use everything I learned from previously lessons in this final assignment. There is really no arguing with the final results when compared to my first attempt at a self portrait in this class. The two look like they were drawn by different people.
I enjoyed this class immensely. Not only did it refine my skills, but also have me new ones. It also gave me the confidence to draw again, regardless of how difficult I might believe an object is to draw. The main challenge of the class was definitely how intimidating I found it was to get back into drawing. In the beginning, I found myself struggling with the foundations. Just drawing a straight line gave me anxiety, but through practice and implementation, I think my skills have definitely improved. I also found drawing faces difficult, but after a few weeks of practice, the portrait assignments grew to be my favorite because I kept thinking about the results and how good seeing them completed would feel. Something I didn’t mention in my description was the expansion of my drawing tools. I went from one 5B pencil in the beginning of the semester to a whole spectrum of pencils, three different erasers, and a new found love for the blending tool! In the end, I can see the improvements in my drawing but I still see room for improvements. I want to work on my tonal drawings to better eliminate contour lines. I would also like to practice my “quick draw” skills to be able to add more detail in a shorter amount of time. I can’t wait to continue with this and continue to work and learn new skills in the future. I definitely see the benefit of having this skill and it’s practice as a tool for communication and expression.
End of year survey.
START of the Semester
END of the Semester
Employ procedures in sketching correct proportions
2
4
Express form, value, and textures w/shade & shadows
1
5
Demonstrate the use of freehand linear perspective drawing
1
5
Contour (pure line) drawing
2
4
Tonal rendering
1
5
Ability to represent and render visual information
2
5
Create a compelling visual composition
1
4
Ability to rapidly sketch ideas
2
5
Evoke emotive quality in drawings
1
4
Render ideas and concepts in visual form
2
5