Watercolor Paintings

Here are my paintings i made ever since i started with watercolor. I started out with cheap watercolors and i was still trying to get used blending with different colors. I used different techniques in each artwork, wet on wet, wet on dry, and ink and wash. I tried rendering the buildings of Frank Loyd Wright, Mies Van Rohe, and Andrea Palladio.

                                                  Thou shall not fail to pass :p
One of my first paintings using cheap watercolors.

A glimpse

the morning rays scatter into my room
dancing and prancing on my nose
the day boasts into my awaken
as he rejoices of being a youth once again.
i wake up to these songs of the morning
but see the same old door and floor.
that small hat hangs and waits
while that clock ticks and runs.
i walk in and out of that door
and i feel no difference
i stare into this view but i see no miracles
i wake up and grew up seeing it.
when i exit, the day begins.
when i enter,  night falls and the silence hastens 
yet like a gate  it protects me.
and like lid, it reveals just a glimps  of surprises my day has yet to offer.

How does architecture affect us?

How do buildings leave manifestations when we see them? Are they not just shapes and forms that were just scaled to a bigger size? These mere objects are inanimate, so how do they speak to us? 

      To put in a simpler way, try comparing objects to people's facial expressions. They too are shapes that we create on our face, like the curvature of a smile, or when eye brows form 2 lines pointing towards the nose. And we know that when lips form a curve a person is smiling and it expresses a happy feeling. These too are merely shapes, yet we know what it means to us because of our experiences with these shapes. When we were newly born we knew nothing of facial expressions until our mothers and fathers smiled at us or laughed at our adorable baby butts, we then knew that the shapes on their faces meant something.

And if we look back at our grade 8 platonic solids, we know that each platonic solid symbolizes something. Tetrahedron is the most mobile of all solids, and it represents fire. While fire is powerful and independent as it is self-sustaining. If we live each day seeing giant tetrahedral structures nearby, how would it affect us? Would we become like Ancient Egyptians working as a whole to build giant structures? What gave them the ambition to build great monuments like the Sphinx? Could it be because of the colossal pyramids seen in every direction? Since pyramids are tetrahedral like structures, could those be what gave the Egyptians their inner flame that allowed them to accomplish their title?

Another way for buildings to speak to us is when they resemble memories and events. When I look at an old French apartment with balconies and plants that flourish on them, it reminds me when I was still a totoy, crawling down the hallway of my grandparent's house and entering the balcony. My grandmother loved plants and flowers so she often watered her plants on the balcony. As I was entering the balcony, the strong scent of flowers that eddies with the wind flew to my face, I was happy with those simple joy and warm feelings. So that explains the emotions i feel when I look at French architecture. It's simplicity appears to me to be touching and warming.

 Disclaimer: i did not take these photos, i only used them for educational purposes.

ideas and pictures came from the book Architecture Of Happiness by Alain de Botton

DESIGN 3

This is a low pressure fan that was built during the early 20th century when modern designs were slowly becoming famous to the world. According to Le Corbusier this was a design of simplicity, sleekness and efficiency. More prominently he believes that modern houses should have these characteristics. It showed in his designs, and for it he is known as the father of modern architecture.

 

Villa Savoye, a well renowned house for its design and philosophy, was also designed by Le Corbusier. It almost looks like a UFO ready to take off into space. It has some characteristics of the Low pressure fan shown on the last picture too, but what's more obvious is that it's made of simple forms and shapes. As if it's made from a sliced cube with pilotis on the sides and 2 cylinders on the roof top. It's sleek, simple, efficient to its purpose, which is to be a house and nothing else. 

I was inspired by Le Corbusier's idea of finding forms and inspiration from objects. So i compiled some random stuff that i had laying around and took a picture of it. I printed it, and traced it.

When i finished tracing, it became my floor plan.         Using the those shapes i drew it on paper and raised its walls while drawn in perspective.This just shows how the forms and shapes we see everyday could be good architecture too, minus the philosophy that architects would usually add :P 

Some ideas came from the book Architecture Of Happiness

Town of leaning roof tops.

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Floor Plan for Central Maginhawa clinic

Sketches

               As my mind is set on architecture for now I've been practicing on the depth of my drawings. This would include perspective, shading and rendering important details to the drawing. In this drawing i tried copying a small portion of Venice, or at least enough to capture the environment and it's classical forms, like the arched doors and framed windows with no glass.

Here's a street i rendered from my mind. I imagined it to be in Paris, a place for romance, passion and simplicity. The stacked up buildings filled with residents keep the streets alive day until night. The fruit stands and plants placed on balconies (not in the drawing) keep the aroma pleasant and fresh. This city was my first inspiration to architecture and i've always adored it, the balconies, the rectangular shaped buildings stacked together, it's simple yet the architecture gives warmth to me. 

Practicing perspective and freehand drawing.

Inspired by the architect Berry Berkus. He says that an architect always has to freshen his imagination by simply sketching shapes and forms. No need to copy details or perspective, just keep drawing and drawing. He does this by drawing what he sees and where he's been be from. My drawing was based on the buildings of Vietnam when i was once a tourist there back in 09s (2009 hehe). You can see how their buildings are influenced by French architecture as they were under the French colonization way before the first world war.

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