Friday, November 28, 2008

SEMINARS

A growing number of inquiries have lead us to offer Urban Design seminars. These seminars will address Urban Design theories, Urban Design methodologies, sketching basics, visual techniques and commentaries. Media used for the seminar will include pen, graphite, watercolours and coloured pencils. Cameras will be used as well. Descriptive commentaries and labels will be used towards developing a discourse in urban design.
These will be useful to professionals of urban design, community representatives and to artists as well who have an interest in the topics of urban design.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

INTERIORS

Public places are people places "par excellence." The urban designer behind the sketch artist will attempt to express the gatherings, behaviours, figures and moments around as they evoke strong recollections of place. This recollection is especially significant because we identify ourselves actively in a people scene. Our experience of place is subliminal. It must be distinguished from the passive experience of place through landscapes or the built form. Both need be incorporated to grasp the fuller totality of that experience.

JMB: An indoor bar/restaurant scene in one of the most "urban" area in Calgary - Eau Claire. I really wanted to illustrate the distinctive quality of the lighting fixtures with a high-ceiling open hall against big bright windows.


This quick sketch of APM restaurant in Calgary uses 3 paints: indigo, rose madder and cadmium yellow. I find this minimalist palette provides a great base for indoor lighting. In this case the open high ceiling offers space and bright lights even in the evening. It is a favourite gathering place for all ages. It is comfortable, spacious and modern stylish. I originally had focused on the red and yellow lights over the bar, and found as I quickly painted that the perspectives flattened nicely with the ceiling height to convey the experience of the place with the waitress going back and forth with bubble teas and dinner specials to tend to a quiet and relaxed customers. The 3 paints mixed perfectly to express the colour scheme and the flat brightness of the interior design.

This other interior sketch at Earl's Tin Palace was done with indigo, ochre and rose madder. The ochre and the rose madder combined nicely to create the special posh lighting of the place. The ochre sets nicely the giant lighting fixtures. As part of the minimalist palette, the indigo serves well to add tone and values. All this was done in fifteen minutes with my water glass and a dinner saucer to mix the paints. The doorway wall to the washroom adds another feature: it is a bright mat white, which I set off with the natural paper, by adding a pale ochre grey wash to the rest of the walls. This wall sets a nice contrast with the rest of the space. I overlayed the quick pilot fineliner study sketch I did aftwerdards. A couple of adjustments in Photoshop made it possible to finish off the scene for the web - until I have time to add the scene on the original


Another is a patio scene in one other - almost "iconic" urban scene in Calgary - Kensington - this is a sepia / indigo underwash, and I will be glazing the colour value over it.
This was as simple as having a pocket brush and a couple of paint tubes in the same shirt pocket. The sepia and indigo are perfect for fast sketches, because they offer a full range in value, and together combine for a wide range of warm and cool tones. This was done directly from the paint tubes, dabbing the excess paint from the cap. At times watercolour can be the simplest and most minimal artform.



MEMORIES OF PLACE

Memories are an important aspect of Sense of Place. It is often overlooked. Sketching is the ultimate art of recording memories, and going back to sketches done long before brings back the reality of that place. It is a powerful experience and it is one further step in urban design which incorporates time. The process of sketching requires intense quasi trance-like "seeing" and revisiting a sketch years later will bring back the vision of that moment.

JMB: These are watercolours I just painted from sketches I drew over 10 years ago in the Canadian Kootenays.












Fernie's Art Station - a reconverted train station













Kimberley's churches


















Fernie's City Hall

Monday, September 08, 2008

SKIES, LEAVES AND WATER

Skies, leaves and water provide the textural background to a sense of place. This texture is a function of seasons and habitat. It offers a unique flavour to the urban experience of each city. Also, this same texture will appear in all sketches. It is therefore essential to the local vernacular we draw.









Saturday, August 30, 2008

AXES AND BOULEVARDS

Main axes into the City - the street that would be boulevarded ie. where traffic is separated in the middle by a boulevard for two one-way traffic. These are important to European cities. The vehicular meets the urban, and pedestrian, mixed use, and green functional dividers are all features that are missing in Calgary. These axes in Europe provide organization, coordination and hierarchy into the heart of the City. They are full of life and bustles, enclaves and places for everything to happen from the personal to the formal. It is unfortunate that in Calgary they have been relegated to sterile vehicular tubes through the city with little to no urban appeal. This is most obvious on this section of Memorial Drive that sterilized the Briges for decades. While Memorial Drive was designed with care, foresight and as a promenade around the downtown, lined with residences along the Bow River and green pedestrian dykes, the 4th Avenue flyover is a futile attempt to make access into the downtown functional. This night scene makes an otherwise dreary example of insensitive modernity somewhat interesting.

Another important axis is McLeod Trail. It is in contrast quite successful as an "American graffiti" styled "Strip." Of course the other signifcant axis in and out of the downtown core is Elbow Drive along the Elbow River. Outside of these three axes, there are no other axes into Calgary. Considering the size of this City, the utter lack of this important urban design feature is responsible for a lot of the weakened images that make up the experience of place in Calgary. It seems an obsession with grids, suburbia and no U-turns, has removed a concentric focus of major axes and boulevard from our vernacular. As a result, this significantly undermines the quality of the urban experience in Calgary. A more unique feature of axes and boulevard is Calgary's Trails - Crowchild Trail, Blackfoot, Barlow, Deerfoot. The concept however has been allowed to vegetate from its historic roots and allowed to weaken from the unimaginative obsession to feel functional, vehicular and rational.

SCHOOLS















Elbow School

Thursday, August 07, 2008

CHAPELS


Wednesday, August 06, 2008

CHURCHES

JMB: We went to the bridges - Steve, Ihor, Hans, Cole, Wenyan and me - and lost ourselves in an explosion of churches in this unique part of Calgary. There are churches everywhere. And, with the revitalization of this area at the base of the escarpment to the river, magnificent religious architecture serves as backdrop, beacon and focal elements in this neighborhood.

Saint Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox
404 Meredith Road NE
















































Ukrainian Catholic Church of Assumption
704 6 St NE






























































































Saint John Lutheran Church
204 6A Street NE




































































Hillhurst United Church
1227 Kensington Close NW
Then, with Wenyan we went to Kensington to sketch the Hillhurst United Church that celebrates its 100th year anniversary. It is a jewel - albeit in need of some fixing up - that meshes admirably within the ecclectic fabric of the Hillhurst community, offering vistas, texture and impeccable rythm.














































Parkdale Grace Evangelical

There is delightful whimsy in this little church with a "parabolic" roof.

VANCOUVER WEST COAST

JMB: Steve brought back tidbits from his trip as well.


























































Thursday, July 31, 2008

AMSTERDAM, ANDORRA, TOULOUSE, PARIS

JMB Images of modernity abound at airports around the world - Amsterdam's Schiphol is no exception, and a successful example of clean functional lines.















ANDORRA
In Andorra, via Barcelena, images of modernity juxtapose with vista down another couple millenia, and nature all around.















































TOULOUSE
Toulouse offers examples of a golden age of urban spaces from the 19th Century around the train station.


































PARIS
In Paris,a little walking around anywhere reveals slices of history at your pencil tip.









































































AMSTERDAM
Back to Amsterdam with a little more time to draw.