San Diego Civic Theatre, San Diego, California: Conceptual color marker sketch on yellow trace paper shows the exuberance of opening night.
For past decades, I have explored architectural ideas through drawing: from tentative doodles to scratchy sketches, from colored diagrams to illustrative depictions. Though a variety of technological tools are at my fingertips—CAD, 3DS, Photoshop, even AI—I still prefer the simplest of tools at my desk, a pencil and my hand.
Design sketches can be artifacts representing a search for ideas, sometimes an elliptical journey of tests and failures. In other cases, sketches can establish the conceptual narrative and design agenda—a graphic thesis, a 2D picture that launches the creative process. Design sketches can also be gestural capturing gestalt and overall expression, as taught in figure drawing classes. Or perhaps, an illustration can delineate an architectural caricature, not unlike the art within the comic books of my youth.
Here, I have collected 17 various sketches of mine for your perusal—all part of a creative journey, not to be scrutinized as a final product or conclusive solution.
Saffron restaurant, Beverly Hills, California: An intentionally crude collage of marker and craft papers explores broad ideas of patterns, colors and fabrics—ignoring tedious details.Din Tai Fung restaurant, The Americana at Brand, Glendale, California: For this 160-seat, 7,000-square-foot restaurant, thin and thick black ink lines display the patterned wood and glass screens wrapping from walls to ceiling.Pacific Christian High School, Culver City, California: Color pencils over color markers over a photocopy of a pencil drawing—a bird’s eye view show three brick anchor buildings (theater, library and cafeteria) connected by occupiable green roofs.Library at the American University of Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt: Quick five-minute pencil sketch of shade and shadow expresses the Egyptian-influenced modern design and associated stone pattern (while w/ HHPA).Taegu Arena, Taegu, Korea: For a 14,000-seat basketball arena, gestural sketch on yellow trace paper—a few lines represent the curved glass walls and saddleback roof.Start Select esports lounge and bar, Arcadia, California: Heavy shades and tones from markers and color pencils capture the hangout mood of technology and drinks.Buddhist Temple, Natural Bridge, Virginia: A minimal pencil and marker drawing made evocative with a Photoshoped backdrop of the property’s actual trees.Greenman Elementary School, West Aurora, Illinois: A piano work by J.S. Bach inspires the rhythm of windows on the building’s brick surfaces, a school that emphasizes a performing arts curriculum–color pencil and pen.Robbins Elementary School, Trenton, New Jersey: 20-second doodle of pen and color pencils explores how the proposed collision of new glass additions to an existing traditional red brick building.Kenter Residence, Los Angeles, California: A traditional living room captured in mere pencil lines and modest textures.EC Kids fitness and community center, Culver City, California: An aerial view depicts playful forms, recreational areas and youthful spirit, inserted into an existing 10,000-square-foot industrial warehouse, done in color markers.Aztec Student Union, San Diego State University, San Diego, California: For a new 230,000-square-foot university center, a fast and loose five-minute, color pencils sketch exhibits the public space, the heart of the design. (while w/ HHPA).Sushi Noguchi, Yorba Linda, California: Quick repetitive pencil line work captures the many wood slats that provide privacy, filtered sunlight, ceiling interest, and overall interior warmth and character.Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Renovation of an existing stair, color pencil, markers, and paper collage on white trace.
Why do I sketch? Sketching comprises many things: artistic ideas, physically moving one’s body, and communicating an idea to an audience. With drawing, I enjoy the connection between my brain and my hand, between my imagination and a pencil, between an idea and a blank piece of paper. I also find complacency in how graphite moves across the tooth of vellum or how ink slides across smooth trace.
Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Exploratory sketches for a new lobby, pen in sketchbook.
#74: LEARNING FROM FIGURE DRAWING: THE BIG PICTURE
November 24, 2017
Three diverse techniques of figure drawings: left by Clara Lieu; middle by Liz Hill; right by Anthony Poon
So as teenagers in figure drawing class, we all had that moment when the beautiful model dropped her robe to the floor and stood there in all her naked glory, surrounded by students in awe and dropped jaws. Then our teacher said to study the model and draw.
Figure drawing studio (photo from artconnect.com)
As awkward as it was, as inappropriate as it might have been for us young artists, we grinned and took in the nude figures before us. We learned to observe—have the details of the body enter our eyes and brains and come out of our hands. With black and white charcoal pencils, we sketched the human subject ten feet in front of us, onto newsprint ten inches in front of us.
I continue this exercise of observation and recording as I draw regularly in my sketchbook, whether it is a group of people, a bowl of fruit, or a composition of buildings. But what I learned most from my figure drawing class was seeing The Big Picture.
In figure drawing, not seeing The Big Picture can be catastrophic. Our art teacher instructs us to lightly glide our hand over our paper, imagining how we might capture the entire figure in broad strokes. But we are taught to not yet touch the paper with our pencils. As our hand gracefully outlines the figure over and over again without actually producing a visible charcoal line on the paper, our art instructor finally commands, “Begin!” Without a break in motion, our pencils touch the paper and the general profile of the nude body is softly outlined.
Figure drawing, think Big Picture first (photo from hoodstreetartcenter.com)
Though this sounds like artistic gibberish, imagine the common disasters that could occur. An eager student might focus on the model’s foot, carefully drawing each toe, highlighting the textures and shadows. As this sophomoric student moves up the body slowly, drawing the legs, the waist, the torso . . . “Oh damn! I don’t have enough room on my sheet of paper to draw the model’s shoulders and head!”
This unfortunate result happens a lot in class. And in life as well.
The Big Picture master planning sketches and models for MacArthur Place, Santa Ana, California, by Anthony Poon (w/ MPFP)
We should all be in motion, energetically outlining the total impression of our existence, and not simply confronting daily details. Every self-help book, good or bad, and every business advice blog suggest that you set your ten year goals, then your five year goals that get to the ten years goals. Then you are to identify the annual goals that get to your five year goals, and your monthly goals to . . . , well, you get the idea.
If you simply focus on what you are doing each day without thought to the overall arc of The Bigger Picture, you are only drawing the foot or a toe. Even if this foot is perfectly represented, later in life you will realize that you never even thought about the rest of the body.
Like figure drawing, a concept sketch for Staples Center, Los Angeles, California, by Anthony Poon and Greg Lombardi (w/ NBBJ)