Wacom, Farm house on the Palouse

       This piece was done about a week ago while experimentaing with a Wacom tablet on Adobe Illustrator. I abstracted this picture of a farm house on the palouse. I wanted to break down this image to a more basic form. I figured that using a limited amount of colors, I could break down this image into its simplest form. This exercise was a great way for me to play around with a Wacom tablet. I have an HP Touchsmart laptop, but for some reason it did not feel the same as the tablet. The Wacom tablet's stylus was a different twist on drawing, different but good.

       This image is of the same image I abstracted above, I used a tool I learned about on another project I was working on. It is quite an interesting tool on Illustrator, it is call "live trace". This tool can abstract an image in a number of ways. It is a tool to remember when in the need of a creative push.

Uris Giron

Figure and Ground

    This is an image of a plant with leaves, around the plant is void space. The image was drawn with graphite on a piece of sketching paper, then it was cleaned up using Adobe Photoshop. Images drawn in this manner are a great way to play around with figure and ground, to see void space as an object and vice-versa. I often forget that the sky and a surrounding can be used as an object in a design, a great example of this would have to be Louis Kahn's Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. For this reason, thinking of void space as an object can help to understand more about a location than what is physically there.

     I missed quite a bit of void space that I did not cover up. I was using a pencil with a B size lead. I had to press hard on the paper to get the tone somewhat dark. I should have tried to find a softer lead of pencil. This would have made my image look more clean and vivid.
     I missed quite a bit of void space that I did not cover up. I was using a pencil with a B size lead. I had to press hard on the paper to get the tone somewhat dark. I should have tried to find a softer lead of pencil. This would have made my image look more clean and vivid.

Uris Giron  

Contour Lines

       The sketch above was drawn to represent the form of the human body when placing them in a space, in other words, the main focus was on the contour lines. After I drew the contour lines of these people I saw that I need to work more on the details and location of the body and it's parts.

       I used Photoshop to edit out the details of the image. I wanted to see how much of a difference would be made if I was to place an emphases on the contour lines of the people instead of unneeded details. I saw that less detail drawn on the people, placed most of the attention on the space and not on the people themselves. It is good to keep in mind that the details of a person is not as important as the details of a space. Some of the places humans design are meant for people, but a crudely drawn model of a person can detract from where the focus should be on a rendering.

       I gave drawing the contour line another try on my HP Touchsmart laptop. I took it slow and drew the person as just another structure in a space. I kept the idea out of my mind, that I was drawing a person. It helps to draw when you let your mind and body do its thing, without the detraction of unneeded thoughts that can distract your focus.

Uris Giron

Tree Sketch

           The other day our class went out and sketched some trees for about 15 min, one with no leaves and the other one with them. We wanted to capture the light playing off the trees. The first one I drew was the tree to the left side of the image. I wanted to capture some details with the bark of the tree, but what I put most time into was giving the tree a 3 dimensional look. The shadows that the branches created helped give the image that depth I was looking for. The tree to the right of the image was drawn in a different Style; I wanted to give it a more animated look. So I drew it with strong horizontal lines instead of free flowing lines. I did draw the tree structure free handed.

          I scanned my drawing and cleaned up any ink smudges I made, by using Adobe Photoshop, I also edited and removed the yellow color that my sketching paper had. I wanted the trees to be the main focal point in this sketch. Not a big, black ink,fingerprint smudge.

Uris Giron

My Design Philosophy

I see design as a way to solve problems in a different, innovate of way. The solution to problems in the built environment are not something that can be solved through conventional ways, it takes critical thinking, a keen eye for details and an oddball thinker. There is an art to solving problems and i believe that sometimes, answers are not right in front of us,the right answers are felt but cannot be understood, it is an answer that is abstract, we can not perceive it but yet we understand it in our subconscious. Nature has solved most of our problems, i believe that we just have to see things as nature does, abstractly, with the usage of colors, textures, spatial orientations and new ways of thinking.

Uris Giron