SEEING THE LIGHT

Our assignment was to make a luminaire based off of the "light phenomenon" photo we took previously. Who knew it would be such an undertaking?!

My phenomenon was of the sun setting behind mini blinds. You could see just a peek of the sun between the blinds. I wanted to capture this peeking of light in my light fixture.

While looking up ideas I stumbled upon the work of Vicente Garcia Jimenez. His use of layering laquered materials and varying the amount of light shown inspired me.

I first made a little sketch model of what i was kind of thinking of doing with mylar. Then i made a prototype out of cardboard.

When I went to make my final piece I discovered that plastic sheeting wasn't as easy to glue as cardboard was. Because it's clear I had to be very careful with my glue choice. I decided to score the sides and use much bigger pieces just for ease.

After playing around with different ways of gluing/attaching pieces I came to the conclusion that if I could paint glue on evenly and apply lots of pressure it would be nearly invisible. I sanded the sides to make them less transparent and glued everything together. The glue took FOREVER to dry so I spent plenty of time at the middle table waiting.

After everything was dry I made a smaller box to cover the bulb because it was still pretty bright. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the box before attaching that piece (also scored) onto the box. I then put the socket through and glued it to the hole. I made little standing pieces to insert in the bottom so that the box was raised and wasn't sitting right on the cord.

with inner box

without inner box

from top

I experimented  with putting mylar between sheets of plexiglass 

I almost used wire but it was too bulky

I almost used brads but they, too, were just bulky

We then had to do technical drawings of our piece along with an expressive drawing. The technical ones weren't hard to draw at half scale but my one regret is that I didn't look closely at my light effect in a dark room before drawing it. I think it would have been much more successful had I done that.

I had some serious challenges with this project (expensive materials, FRAGILE MATERIALS, materials that required much patience, etc) but I really think it turned out well. 

A PEEK AT THE FUTURE?

This week I went to one of the second year critiques. Their assignment (or what they could interpret from Jonathon's long project statement!) was to take a piece of paper and make rules for how it should be folded...this crease should always go here, the folds should be this size...etc. They took their paper designs and blew them up on the computer and turned them into full scale pieces. Some versions ended up in parks, others in urban spaces.

Jasmine shared with us her concept of weaving paper strips together to make something instead of folding it. She focused on weaving and tension folding. She used aluminum mesh since it was already woven and used fishing wire to sew it into the form that she wanted. She used points from her hand to give the model directional tension, something she learned from an earlier assignment about the human body. She shared with us that 3D modeling was definitely harder than expected!

Justin and his group told us about their concept of biomimicry and how they wanted to capture the look of wind and dune formations. To recreate their paper model they used the laser cutter on acrylic and then baked the model in the oven and had to check on it and shape it periodically. They wanted their piece to be placed in an urban setting and were inspired by the light effects it would produce/that would be produced through it in that type of setting.





What did the students have to say about their projects and challenges? They said that even though some of the assignments will be hard to understand, you have to take your interpretation and "keep moving forward!" They also quoted Tommy saying to "always have a beginner's mind." Later that day one of the second years was walking around looking at our studio. He told a few of us that he stopped in at a few of our previous critiques and that the work we've done was much different/even a little better than theirs last year. I'm not sure how true that really is but it's exciting to think about moving forward and creating things like these. Things aren't going to get any easier but they're definitely going to get more interesting!

DESIGN VISUALIZATION 110

This semester I definitely learned a lot. I learned the expected things like how to successfully draw many types of architectural drawings, how to scale a line down, etc. I also learned the best type of pencils to use in different drafting situations, the best way to sharpen those pencils, the way to hold them...I learned that masking tape and drafting tape are definitely not to be mistaken for the same thing. I learned that staring at the same paper for hours can make your eyes do crazy things.

While my drawings weren't usually up to the high standards set, I know that I worked hard this semester (ask my roommates...they had to make sure I was still alive sometimes I was gone so much!). I've discovered that it's pretty near impossible to get a high A, at least for me, but with more practice it'd be an easier goal to reach.
 Speaking of practice, I've had much practice doing observational drawings this semester as well. We started out drawing leaves...then came twigs...and so on. I wish that I had spent more time on EVERY drawing...I think it's probably evident in my sketchbook which drawings I took time on and which ones I didn't. While I'm by NO means an expert sketcher, I think that my drawing abilities definitely improved. I'm better at shading for sure.

I think that this is one of my most successful drawings from my sketchbook. I took more time to get this one right and I think it turned out well. 

I'd be lying if I said this was my favorite class ever, but I can say I'm definitely taking a lot away from it!

MOST MINIMAL

In drafting, we've been working on figure drawing for the past couple of weeks. This drawing is from a day that we all took turns in modeling and sketching each other in groups. We had 10-15 minutes for each drawing and by the end of the exercise we each had 2 drawings on our papers. At the end, we all posted up the better of our two drawings and the class voted on different superlatives such as best line quality, craziest style, etc. My drawing here won "most minimal" and you can see why!