Owen Harries Landscape Blog

 One task do before the next design projects lecture was to draw four rectangles, roughly postcard sized in our sketchbooks, and to draw the same view four times, using different media. I chose to use Graphite stick (6B), Sharpie (worn out), 0.5mm drawing pen, and oil pastels. The oil pastels were an experiement and I did find that I could quite quickly draw using them, and the colour helped to note more about the view than just lines. I decided to do these sketches while out on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path near where I grew up. Below are the results of this exercise.

 Something which I love about living Cheltenham is walking or cycling through Pittville Park every day and observing the seasonal changes, noticing, and often photographing the trees in different lights and times of day. My favourite times of day to see the park are early morning or late evening with the 'golden hour' light. My favourite trees in Pittville Park are probably the giant Quercus cerris (Turkey Oak) south of and in view from the Pump Rooms, and the Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood). I like the Quercus cerris because of its bark's texture, the sheer size, and the form with its huge limbs visible most of the year, especially during winter. I like the Dawn Redwood as I find them to be fascinating trees, they have nicely shaped and textured trunks at the bases, becoming more uniform and smooth towards the top, usually. It's also unusual to see many deciduous conifers, not to mention the fact that as a species they are living fossils, and have been pres...

 I enjoyed experimenting with brush and black ink to draw. It has a much more fluid characteristic, and more attention has to be paid to the loading of the brush than when you use paint and a brush as it is much more viscous, and therefore the brush offloads quicker. I found that it was harder to create thinner, and uniform lines using brush and ink, although that may have been my choise of brush.  Top Left: Different Line Types, Bottom Left: Stormy Seas and Skies, Top Right: Favourite Woodland (Ty Canol, Pembrokeshire), Bottom Right: A Formal Garden with People.

 This week's task was to explore different transformations by collecting seven identical objects to transform in different ways, then present to the class. I decided to use Jaffa Cakes, which in theory was a good idea, but in practice got quite messy! The transformations were subtractive, additive, symmetrical, asymmetrical, distortion, abstraction, and fragmentation. I believe my distortion transformation was the least strong of them all as the chocolate topping cracked in the process of trying to melt the Jaffa Cake in my oven. The image below is the result. The final presentation of these will be tidied up on Photoshop and InDesign for submission. Of course the best part of this project was eating it after photographing it!

 This is a quick sketch I did using a 6B graphite stick looking out of my north-facing window towards Cheltenham Racecourse. I am happy with how this sketch turned out, and have found that I really enjoy using graphite sticks for sketching.

 In project 3 we were tasked to use an image of one of our quick models from the previous week to photoshop it into different backgrounds to explore and show different scales. On the left, I made the model small and fitted it onto an image of my hand, I think this could have been made slightly better by adding a slight shadow which would've made it look more realistic. In the centre, I photoshopped the model image into a picture of Place Massena in Nice, France. I decided to photoshop a seagull from another image I took, and place it to be stood on top of my model, having printed this out, I now think the seagull is slightly too large. On the right I put the model as a giant structure hovering over the sea on a picture of Aberystwyth, Wales, near to where I grew up.

 This was an exercise we did in groups of three in the History and Contemporary Landscapes lecture. We were told to create a conceptual design sketch for a show garden in a 10m x 10m plot. We explored having seven different streams of water meandering into the centre where they would all meet a circular rill. The streams converging in the centre was used to show how people come together. In terms of planting, we tried to show about having native plants from each continent in the central rill island, and that the garden was greener in the centre, and more barren/war-struck on the outer edges. and this was in a wavy line to demonstrate that not all sides/continents were as equally effected by war. I drew the quick, sketch axonometric, which if I'm honest, looks a lot like a model village(!), however I believe it showed our design ideas well. We drew the general plan sketch as a group.

An exercise duruing the design studio class this week was to use an A1 sheet of cartridge paper and masking tape to create four different conceptual models which represent two different words (and only one word for the final model). We were given five minutes for each model. I will then go on to choose one of these models to Photoshop into three different backgrounds to explore scale for next week. I took some of these words more literally/conceptually than others. My least conceptual model was for Crash where I took it literally and modelled a vehicle crashing into a wall. The different words were: Folded/Pleated and Planar, Curved and Textured, Spatial and Pierced, and the final one was Crash. 

 As a weekly project in the design studio module, we were tasked with taking photographs showing five different colours in the same range. I chose blue, and so I found 5 different things around where I live (Cheltenham/West Wales) which were different shades of blue. We were also encouraged to show texture in these photographs. Secondly, it was asked that we brought in five additional items which were all showing different form and characteristics, and could be related toa narrative which explored juxtaposition.  This is an image of my composition which explores juxtaposition and narrative. My five images were the sky, my blue denim jeans, the blue ocean, the foliage on a Cedrus atlantica tree, and the dome of Pittville Pump rooms, photographed with a telephoto lens on my DSLR camera. I believe that these images all explored different shades, and textures quite well. My five objects were five leaves, all from differend deciduous plants, all in different autumnal stages. The ...

 I had some old gardening magazines which I didn't want to discard, so I decided to experiment with using collage. I enjoyed using collage as a way to render and bring texture to a sketch (until my sketchbook pages all started sticking to my fingers!). below is an image of what I managed in around 45 minutes. Had I spent longer on this, or created a more detailed drawing I think I could've added more detail by ripping smaller pieces of magazine, however I'm happy with the effect created in this quick trial. The effect I was going for was three trees which were all displaying slightly different autumnal states/colours, with a boat on a lake behind.

 A quick sketch I did looking out of one of my flat's windows. This one looking east towards Prestbury and the Cotswolds. I used a Pilot V5 pen for this sketch, which is my go-to as it is easy and versatile. I will look to explore using a thicker pen such as Sharpies or Pentel N60 pens, and pencils to see what sort of effect these can give. I started by drawing horizontal horizon lines and outlines of large features in the view before adding vertical lines and details. A quick sketching technique I learnt in the first year of my course. The perspective of the building on the right doesn't look quite right to me, however I am fairly happy overall with the rest of the sketch considering I did this sketch in under 10 minutes. I was trying to con concentrate on not spending too long being a perfectionist and being pedantic about small details!