Week 3 Stuff

Here are the 36 custom textures:

Updated Sketch-Up Model + Attempt at Stairs

I played around with the model that i had below a bit more so it looks like this now:The main difference (you can see it better in the photo below) is that I've changed it from having a floating platform for the bottom part into the whole building having a sort of shard running through it. It looks more striking this way and fits the "suspended/unsettling" quota better.
These are the first stairs that I attempted. I tried making it look like the stairs were growing out of the sides of the glass and wrapping themselves around and to the top level. I still haven't decided whether or not to add a balustrade.
The second set of stairs I tried making froze my (very old) laptop, so... that was annoying. But they were meant to look something like this:
I'll try and post the image of them when I've tried making them again and, hopefully, this time it wont die on me.

Sketch Up Design... the sequel!

Since the last sketch up was an embarrassment, I have gone ahead and done one that is better but still not... great. Does it have stairs? No. Will it have stairs? Yes. When will it have stairs? Perhaps tomorrow when I decide to put them in.

The original drawing for this building was

Here's the main bulk of the building: the words they represent are 'suspended and 'unsettling'.
So this is what it looks inside. The glass thing inside is meant to be the first artists studio, the big box is the gallery and the bottom triangular thing is the second artists studio.
The second artists studio - its meant to be like a floating platform.
...And the first artists studio with two levels in the glass enclosure.

Sketch Up Design

The sketch up was inspired by this picture:

And here it is (finally):
I have yet to finish the lower layer, or the inside - so this is pretty much the shell of it.

Oh, and the materials are: glass for the top part (and perhaps the stairs inside?), the orange part is meant to look like copper but they didn't have that texture in sketch up so I used 'rusted metal', and the shell I have put as metal, but I'm still not 100% sure as to what it should be.

18 drawings

And here they are, ladies and gentlemen, in order of completion:

three artists

Richard Goodwin

Prosthetic Apartment (2008)
(image found at http://www.richard-goodwin.com/public_html/gallery/gallery/01_Exhibition%20Exoskeleton/04_Prosthetic%20Apartment%20A/slides/Prosthetic-Apartment-A_01.jpg)

capsule, encompassing, stale

Ricky Swallow

Tusk (2007)

(image found at http://www.rickyswallow.com/img/thumbnail.php?img=gallery/SWALR-00143-300.jpg&w=554&h=554)

closure, suspending, intricate

Patricia Piccinini

Doubting Thomas (2008)

(image found at http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/doutbing-thomas-2008-detailb.jpg)

innocence, questioning, unsettling

three images

a: creative work

This is a self portrait that I handed in as one of the pieces for the 2009 HSC art body of work. I find this image 'interesting' (one finds using that word about their own work somewhat pretentious - especially about a self portrait) mainly due to the layered effect that I attempted in the piece - the first layer is a photograph of myself, followed by a layer of clear contact and, on top of that, details in gold, red and black ink. What I liked most about it is the way that the clear contact - onto which i had outlined my photograph in black ink - had melted around the hand and distorted the black outline, making it look like the face is being peeled away.

b: great piece of architecture
(image courtesy of Wikipedia)


When asked to name a great piece of architecture, perhaps the first image that pops into ones head are the colossal metallic bodies of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum or his Disney Concert Hall - however they are perhaps great only in size for they are somewhat symptomatic of a culture submerged in the beauty of the shiny and new whose balance between functionality and design is askew. To me, greatness, and thus beauty, comes with the ability to counterweight the two, to join them in a simplistic yet imaginative manner such as in the 'Stari Most' (Old Bridge) of Mostar. Built in the 16th century by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin the bridge retains within it a sense of immortal elegance and integrity. An interesting fact? Apparently the architect Mimar was ordered to build the bridge (which, at the time, was the largest man made arch in the world) on pain of death and was planning his funeral on the day the scaffolding came down.

c: something beautiful


Nature is essentially beautiful, and when you live in an apartment building any access to the natural world is even more so. Thus, 'something beautiful' for me would be the tree which grows next to my balcony and frames the view of the street below, providing a somewhat gentle contrast between the built and the natural. Perhaps its greatest novelty lies in the fact that it grows within arms reach yet it does so quietly.