This sketch, done in on the Ca Doro (Palazzo Santa Sofia) in Venice was an investigation into the design of a facade. Our professor told us about how Le Corbusier used to sketch the building when he visited Venice and it's easy to see why. The assymetry and division of an implied grid, unifies and disects the facade into parts.

For example, if you look at the rectangular windows towards the right part of the facade in the picture, you'll notice they are all different sizes and some are more square but if you look closer you'll see that that align vertically centered on an invisible line. It is this kind of pattern you can see in various forms on this facade that I think makes it such a compelling composition.

I used an image from google instead of one of my own photographs for clarity reasons and so I wouldn't have to take into photoshop. This sketch was especially fun to do since across the water you get to sketch next to the fish market and allow the wafting of yesterdays catch to make you concentrate more on your sketching.

Piazza del Campo: travel sketch

These sketches were made by wandering in and around Siena's main piazza: piazza del Campo. One of the best ways of understanding a space is through sketching because it forces one to look for various proportional relationships. I had to represent the piazza as close as I could without looking at any sort of plan or picture but through my experience of it.

After the fact I got this image from Google that shows an aerial view of the piazza. It looks as though I didn't trust my eye as closely as I should have as the figure/ground shows a more idealized half circle than the actual piazza which is slightly deformed due to the terrain. So the figure ground is more diagrammatic than representational.

http://www.citypictures.org/r-europe-148-italy-222-aerial-view-of-piazza-del-campo-siena-italy-2573.htm

The importance of Sketching: Washington Post article

Interesting article discussing the importance of sketching:

"The computer is a powerful tool that must be used properly. Designers who never draw manually still must engage in critical thinking and rational invention, as if they were drawing and designing by hand, even though their hand grasps a mouse instead of a pencil."

-Roger K. Lewis, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AT2011021103539.html