So I’ve already been doing a series of perspectives in varying media – you can see them here
These I’d like to use in my master thesis in architecture school – so I’m working on a good level of abstraction for describing these streets and urban environments. I don’t want to be too detailed – the goal is not to make a photographic representation of the area, but rather to give an impression of the atmosphere, spacial qualities and colours. I think that small watercolour paintings might be the way to go for this. The brush has a certain thickness, and this works as an automatic filter for weeding out excessive detail – with my pencil drawings, it’s harder to chose, and therefore they’re much more complicated to make.
I may do the series of scenes that i intend to use two times in order to get the style refined. I also would like to avoid seeing too much “progress” in skill with the different drawings. They should all be more or less alike, so give the right impression of a series. It’s a little odd to say, but I don’t want to see improvement from my first drawing in the series to the last.
This is a scene from “Mejlgade” in Århus, Denmark. One of the oldest streets in town. This view is where the city-gate was placed in the early middle-ages as-well as the Viking period more than 1000 years ago. I’m working with a site further up the road, on what has been a part of the town since the 14-1500’s. The curved streets and irregular cadernasters of the town bear witness to this epoch, and there’s still a few houses back from the renaissance and upwards. Sadly, Danish towns have been hard on it’s cultural heritage, especially in the 1800’s where a lot of old buildings were torn down and replaced, so although Århus is a really old settlement (it was called Aros by the vikings) – it’s history is not as present as in some European middleage cities.
Very nice. Are you doing any pencil under drawing for these now or just going straight for the watercolour?
Thanks! – Yes, i usually do a messy pencil drawing with just the basic geometry.. Especially with perspectives i need to do that.
Love it! It’s moody.
Thanks! It was a rainy day!
Good job with your choice of watercolor. I am enjoying watching you with this medium. I like your abstract idea to the painting of these scenes. I think you are on to something there!
Thanks! Well the idea was originaly though of by an architect named Gordon Cullen in his book called “the concise townscape. I don’t want to make it look like it’s all my idea. It’s more of a method for recording the experience of a city or a quarter. It’s often really simple and crisp drawings just showing the mere basics, but I’d like to get some more information into the drawings (also i don’t do very well with crisp and neat drawings) – I made a search and found this image – i think they’re illustrations from cullens book http://www.grenoble.archi.fr/arkitekt/res/cullen_serial_vision.png
Very cool. Now, I understand a little more. Great idea!
I really love this one! Wish I could jump into this painting and spend some time there…