USK Barcelona DAY 3 Florian & Arno

I have written about my other Barcelona Urban Sketching workshops .

http://www.alissaduke.com/2013/10/usk-barcelona-day-2-richard-alomar.html Richard Alomar

http://www.alissaduke.com/2013/09/usk-barcelona-day-2-barry-jackson.html Barry Jackson

http://www.alissaduke.com/2013/09/urban-sketching-symposium-day-one-pm.html Marc Taro Holmes

http://www.alissaduke.com/2013/08/urban-sketching-symposium-day-one-am.html Luis Ruiz

All of my Barcelona sketches are on flickr

This was the final workshop of the Urban Sketching Symposium on the Saturday morning. It was Barcelona Perspectives: Percepting and drawing Architecture (Workshop J)

Instructors: Florian Afflerbach and Arno Hartmann

Location: Caixafòrum

“You always have to express what is there to see – but above all you always have to (and that’s far more difficult) see what is there to see.” (Le Corbusier, famous architect, in a speech to students, 1962)
Starting from this quotation, we want to teach the participants to see correctly, which – in the end – means to draw correctly. The workshop is about drawing architecture correctly. It is a beginner’s or advanced workshop.

Sample Exercises

We are using a frame that represents the sheet of the paper. We make sure about our position towards the building we’re going to draw with preparatory drawings. Walking through the city, we’re mostly in a perspective relation to its buildings. A grid tells us about spatial shortening through perspective. With the grid, we’re able to transfer the correct proportions. The pencil can be used to find the horizon, which is important to establish the vanishing points onto the paper. The frame and the grid (and far more other drawing supports) will be attached to a script we hand out to every participant.

Learning goals

Learn how to see correctly through tutorials about perception, image plane and common perspective drawing.

To develop a feeling for space and proportions.

Knowledge about the dependence between viewpoint, angle and composition.

Perspective skills with 1 and 2 vanishing points.

Get to know architecture through drawing

We all caught the Metro to the Caixafòrum and had a short walk the amazing Mies van de Rohe building. It was originally designed and built as the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition (often called the Barcelona Pavilion) in 1929. There is now a 1986 reconstruction built on the original site.

I knew nothing about the building, although I had heard of the architect. It is an important building in the history of modern architecture, known for its simple form and its spectacular use of extravagant materials, such as marble, red onyx and travertine.

I have included a photograph to give you an idea of its beauty and simplicity. You can read much more about this building at its website http://www.miesbcn.com/en/outside.html

The clear plastic sheet with grid marks
attached to our workshop notes

a page from the workshop notes, showing how to use the grid

The Workshop began with an explanation of use of the grid and measuring from vanishing points. The first position that we sketched from had two vanishing points. Our page was to include the entire building from end to end. This is so very different from my usual approach to drawing buildings. I usually do not draw the entire building and also having disappearing edges that fade away.

This workshop was the most challenging for me. The other workshops had pushed my boundaries and opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and sketching. But here, I was way out of my comfort zone. I found it very “mathematical” , and my brain and body freeze when maths becomes involved in anything in life! So I really had to try very hard and often remind myself to relax and not stress.

This was made so much easier, as one of the other participants was Sue Pownall, who had been a flickr & facebook friend for a while. We finally got to meet and could talk and laugh our way through this workshop. Here is a link to her review of the day http://www.suepownallartist.co.uk/1/category/uskbcn2013d5d50d5e97/1.html

I made a note in my sketchbook that it took me 25 mins to get the first 4 lines down on the page. “

Panic – horizon ? agghh were was the horizon? are we just below it , yes? no?

It then to 10 minutes to get the next two lines

Over an hour later I had 24 lines/marks in the page. Half of these were wrong as Sue & I had changed our comparative measuring system halfway through. Florian and & Arno were VERY patient instructors