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I spent the last several hours traveling around Squirrel Hill and Shadyside invading my classmates’ homes to take photographs for our project this week, which is due Friday.

I’m not exactly sure what I will do with these photos. One of my classmates gave me a great idea, but sadly after I had taken 130 photos. I shot seven of 12, and I hope to do the remaining people tomorrow.

Regardless how the project turns out, I am humbled that my classmates are opening their homes and their lives to me and my camera. I am getting much more from the experience than just photographs.

So class, if you read this, thank you again. I apologize in advance for making you so blurry.

I’m going to skip over what we did today in class, which was essentially reviewing the pairs of photos we took yesterday, and jump right into tonight’s assignment: On photographing a person; and, on being photographed.

We had to write about the experience, so I’m going to include that in it’s entirety because it’s after 1 a.m. and I’m tired. I just wrote it.

For the assignment, I thought it would be interesting to photograph each other’s scars. There’s always a story that goes along with a scar. It’s a reminder of your history, and proof that something happened to you.

I don’t like to injure myself. But sometimes after I have, I’m sadistically happy with the battle wound.

I have a lot of scars in various places on my body. I didn’t realize how many I had before I suggested the idea to Matt Forrest, my partner for the assignment. I have scars on my head, my face, the inside of my lip, the outside of my lip, my shoulder, abdomen, arms, hands, and of course, my knees.

The first scar I can remember is a chicken pox scar on my temple that I must have picked when I was four years old. My most recent scar is from an injury I incurred during a soccer game the day before I started the design fundamentals course. I suffered a four inch scrape from my elbow going toward my hand. It was bloody the first day of class. A week later that scab ripped off during a collision with another player at another soccer game.

Matt did not seem to have a problem penetrating my personal space with his camera to get close-up shots of my scars. I felt a mix of vulnerability and pride while he took the photos. I worried that the lens would pick up other things besides whatever scar he happened to be focusing on. Would the photos show things I don’t want people to see?

I have already seen the photos Matt took. Some make me feel embarrassed and some show my flaws. But we all have flaws. And I’m no different from anyone else. I told him to use whatever photos he wanted. Still, it was weird to see photos that focus so closely on my body. I can’t naturally look at myself that closely. It reminds me that everyone gets to see me and from different perspectives a lot more than I do, and I wonder at the potential disconnect between my mind’s eye and reality.

I did not have any problems getting up close on Matt’s scars. The task became more important than whether I was invading his personal space. I was more concerned with getting the camera to focus one inch away from the disfigurements of his skin.

Matt did not have as many scars as me. But I remember the words he used to describe one of his leg scars. He ran at a sprint into a fire hydrant in the dark, crashing into it with his shin. He pulled back his blood-soaked sock to reveal “chunks of fleshy meat.”

I wish my photos of his scars turned out better. Here’s his shin.

It’s the final week of the design fundamentals summer course. In some ways it feels like we’ve been doing this course for ages. And then, as always, there’s that feeling that it went by too quickly.

This week we’re studying photography with Charlee Brodsky. As stated in this week’s syllabus, “We will look at, discuss, and make photographs.” Simple. I like it.

The goal is to give us a better understanding of photography “in terms of reading photographs and making them.” Cool.

Our assignment for tomorrow is to make six pairs of photos of representational and abstract images. So this afternoon I scooted around Regent Square on my bike taking pictures according to my interpretation of the assignment, which I hope is correct.

The photos I took were okay. I wish they were better. But I was stretched for time.

Here’s an example pairing.

Our five-day drawing bonanza ended with empathetic form. In our case, that meant drawing our own hand.

As usual, Mark was there to help. And I needed it, as I have a hard time figuring out how to portray the dimensions of shapes such as the hand.

This week was the most fun for me. It was a journey into an aspect of design that I have wanted to do and even tried to do previously, but never felt successful. In a way, this week was much more artistic than the others. Although we were given a sense of how illustration comes into play in the job world with idea creation and rendering of concepts, so it wasn’t purely artistic.

The one great thing Mark did was make it clear that we were all capable of drawing. While others were able to draw better than me, I never felt like I was competing with them, or that their level of achievement mattered. All that mattered was whether I could make my next drawing slightly better than the last. And I think Mark’s manner of teaching really helped me to look at it that way.

My knowledge and confidence definitely increased. And I hope to continue practicing, only looking to improve over my previous version.

Today we drew organic shapes, what Mark referred to as amorphic space. He asked us to start by drawing a sphere within a cube, which was kind of funny because he told some of us yesterday that it was an exercise he did with his undergrads for weeks that drove them crazy.

Was he trying to drive us crazy?

We only had 30 minutes of sphere insanity before pushing forward to mushroom and banana peppers. I was really proud of my mushrooms.

Mark went around an helped everyone individually. So there was varied guidance on cross hatching and contour, both of which I think I could receive some more instruction.

But no time!

We wrapped up by working with Magic Dough (i.e., Play-Doh), creating shapes that we then tried to draw. That was a bit of a stretch for most of us. But we did get to keep the dough.

As has been the case every week of the design fundamental course, each day we are forced to make leaps due to the time constraint. This has been working out so far, even though it always seems like a stretch when presented with the new task.

Today we launched into drawing 3D objects. We first traced a scan of an object. For me, it was a camera. We then had to draw it freehand. And then, of course, rotate it in our minds and draw it from a new perspective.

There was much focus on cylinders because we did not deal with them yesterday and they?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re a little tricky. We all looked to Mark for guidance, which he enthusiastically and skillfully provided.

Blocks and Cylinders

We then had to draw an object that we were to have brought in from home. I brought a rubber ducky, which was all curves. So I abandoned that. Mark said we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll tackle organic shapes tomorrow. Naturally.

So I shared a classmates?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plastic picture frame, which proved troublesome for its transparency and angles. Mark came to the rescue, once again.

After learning his insights, I was amazed at what I could draw. I know they?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re just shapes, and not all the good. But I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get bored trying to make them better. And it seems that with practice I could actually get better. That is something I had not believe before.

When I bought my pencils and markers the other day I also got a small sketch book. I did some practice drawings tonight of my candle holder.

Sketch of Candle Holder

I even used my new warm gray markers. They make me so happy.

Today, we tackled fat space, or cubic space. And the first thing we learned, after being asked to draw a cube, was that 90 percent of the class and likely most of the populous has an unrealistic idea of what a cube looks like on paper. Simply put, what you would likely draw as a cube is impossible.

How Cubes Should Look on Paper

I won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get into the history of drawing cubes (it dates back to the 1200s), but I will say that our collective ?¢‚Ǩ?ìimpossible view?¢‚Ǩ¬ù of cubes relies on our conception of a cube, not our actual perception. This means that we apply knowledge of a cube to render it rather than using visual information. If we’re not aware of that, our drawings will suffer. Essentially, an accurate drawing relies on acute perception, not conception.

Intriguing.

Notes

• Conception frames perception (arguable: some say the reverse is true)
• A stick-figure drawing is symbolic, a photograph representational: both are abstract
• Must have some knowledge to draw something, i.e., must have schema and structure
• Doodling is not drawing
• Changing point of view is absolutely critical for a designer

I Prefer Warm Gray

My favorite part was using my new markers. Though I did mix it up with pencil, because I forgot to buy a 30% gray marker yesterday. I remedied that after class, when I bought a 30% warm gray and 50% warm gray (below is 50% cool gray) because I think warm looks better.

Shaded Planes

(Yesterday?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s homework assignment never saw the light of day. Thank god.)

I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t recall ever being able to draw well. Last year I started reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I enjoyed the reading and psychology part, but I found the drawing part rather laborious and other things began sucking up my time until I stopped.

One year later, I am learning to draw again?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthis time, under the direction of CMU?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Mark Mentzer.

Can’t Draw Straight or Round

We started with straight lines. Freehand. One inch. Proved challenging. Apparently my idea of an inch is about 7/8 of an inch. This means I have not been selling myself short.

Then we drew one-inch squares. Then circles. And then we experimented with weights and their effects.

First Squares

My squares and circles weren’t too bad. But I did get frustrated along the way, as is the case with most things that I cannot do well but want to do well.

Our homework assignment is to draw a room and through lines or squiggles or whatever show how that room is used or how light affects the room or heat or sound. I started and put lines all over the place and it looks pretty gay, so I decided to procrastinate by blogging.

We have to hang these on the wall tomorrow morning and try to figure out what is going on. Ah motivation.

Fancy Pencils Will Save Me

Mark told us to get a 2B and 4B pencil, one Prismacolor black pencil and one white pencil, two gray value markers (30% and 50%), a black felt tip pen, and a Sharpie, preferably chisel tip. As I do actually want to be able to draw well, and because buying lots of drawing supplies is a lot easier than drawing itself, I happily obliged.

So at least in the purchasing of drawing supplies, I have succeeded. That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s enough for now to keep me going.

Now, back to the you-know-what.

This week was not as intense as the past couple weeks, which was a nice change. Part of that had to do with us not starting to actually create our change of address forms until Thursday.

Despite only having one day to turn it around, everyone turned in quality work. It was impressive to see all the variations. They all looked professional.

Like I said, I pretty much kept to my thumbnail sketch (which Bob collected—ugh!). I went with a simplified approach that separated the form process into four steps. I eliminated nearly all the directions and instead aimed to make everything clear through the form itself and instructive headers.

My Form

Bob didn’t say much about mine during the critique. It seems that critiques (or crits) are a crapshoot when it comes whether your piece receives much evaluation. Some of us talked about this after class. We mused about the time and energy that goes into a project with the potential that it won’t really be reviewed, and how that can be a bit of a letdown.

Hard to believe there are only two more weeks to go. Next week we explore photography. And the last week is illustration, I believe.

Today Bob critiqued our thumbnail sketches. Mine were pretty bad in retrospect. Bad in the sense that they didn’t look like much time or thought went into them, which is true for the time part. However, as it turns out, I followed my thumbnail sketch for my final production.

Mine were full scale: 10.5 x 6.125. I wanted to see the space I was working with, and get a sense of the organization of the content in that space. I only added a few design details. And I used a pen.

So it wasn’t a big surprise to me that Bob did not spend much time critiquing my thumbnails.

I believe in the idea of sketching out ideas. I was always an advocate for wireframes for web design if time and budget allowed. But I don’t know that there has to be a specific format or look for thumbnail sketches to be useful.

For this project, I felt confident moving forward with the sketches I created. What I’m getting at is I think that part of the process of creating a design is whatever works for you. Thumbnail sketches and wireframes can be very useful, and I believe that complex designs should be sketched and explored before taking them to the computer. But I’m not sure there’s a rule to follow.

Like I said, my sketches helped me and provided direction for my final product. So in effect, they did the job, despite looking like I did not put a lot of time into them.