I get by with a little help from my friends..

Confidence nose dived today off the back of a bad result and a 4 day sick bug with work mounting up. Felt like jacking it in but had to be strong for 1:200 workshop. Some good friends reminded me why I was here and where I was going and what its all about. I'm back on track I think but confidence is such a strange thing on this course. 1 minute its there, next minute its vanished leaving a trail of emotional devastation. Anyway, many thanks to the Monday garden design counselling support group, see you next week at 6....

The joys of a January birthday

Its raining, cold, everyone's skint and I get to have my masterplanning crit! So that's my wedding aniversary, Christmas and birthday gone to the dogs but here's the positives..
My design has potential apparantly, the negative things on my crit sheet were presentational rather than functional etc so I think that's good. I was pleased with my drawings overall despite the 'drab and bizarre' colour scheme. The usual suspects arose such as line hierarchy; trouble is these things always get bumped to the back of the queue due to time constraints. Another mad dash to the finish this week with the A3. But not tonight. I'm off out to commiserate the start of my mid 30s....

Masterplanning

1:2000

Done. I could pick holes in it but I'll leave that to the tutors tomorrow. Got stuck in rendering hell today. The paper in the library was thick and my pens came out funny, watercolours; forget it. Ended up rendering with low opacity in photoshop and then adding bold colour with promarkers. I should have left myself more time for this!!! Photoshop colour has gone over some of my lines and I didn't have time to cut things out properly etc etc. I'm pretty sure I know where the tutors will comment tomorrow but on the whole, I have achieved and its all about the learning curve...right???

drawings and annotation

Drawings and annotation done but rendering will have to be quick fix....

Thames Barrier Park

Modernist building. Did he run the grid from these..

Thames Barrier

Rhythmic wave planting, Iris, Lavender and grasses ready to come out in summer

Stepped hedging, Phyllostachys, Cotoneaster and Taxus

Steel memorial

Betula grids

Suggested as one of my precedent studies. Thames Barrier Park is laid out on a grid with a swathe of path through the middle. I liked the stepped hedging and grids of trees. Amenity areas are laid out inbetween clusters of trees including a contemporary cafe. I wasn't sure about the planted area in the swathe, it was shut for a renovation as the paths were worn, I can see why as some of the them were grass - practical for a park? Overall, I loved the park, clean, contemporary, with waves to soften the harshness of the grid. Lots of steel to reflect the barrier and a frame of modernist flats in the background.

Back to the drawing board

I spent yesterday rethinking my design after the crit. I hadn't really got my head around the massive grid spaces that I had created. 60m apart and you lose the sense of being in a grid anyway. So I re-planned everything and tried to give each section its own character with smaller grid spaces. Here's the results.

I thought I would do something new and flash in photoshop with my perspectives now I've learnt how to use watercolour pencils (which I always avoided due to water and faff etc). However, it looks exactly like what I always do. I'm putting this down to developing a style...

Masterplanning

Perspectives 5-8

Perspectives 1-4

Section 2

Section 1

Rendered plan.

Contextual plan

Very rough, trying to resolve the rhythm of the groynes as my organisational layout

Its taken me a long time to get on board with this, hence tomorrow I'm not pinning up what I had hoped. But, I have moved on and like my concept. Learned over Christmas that I struggle to work alone and need the inspiration of others to move my ideas on. For me, you can't underestimate discussion. Whether its a confidence thing or not, I don't know but anyway, the main thing for me over the last couple of weeks was to resolve the idea, not just do pretty drawings. So here's my progress. The first time I have ever drawn a section - is this right for the 3rd year or did I miss something, ahem..

Back to Eastbourne

Stuck in a bit of a rut over Christmas with masterplanning. Decided to head back down to the site for some inspiration. These pics are from my 1:500 area, the Martello Tower. I love the greys of the tower and Granite boulders with the greys and reds of the pebble shingle. Shame about the new builds with their strong reds in rows, constrasting badly with the natural landscape (imho). The groynes create a nice rhythm which I'm going to use for my design.

Masterplanning

v rough draft 1:500

1:2000 done again

I know were were told to progress from the 1:2000 to the 1:500 but I couldn't move on until I sorted my 1:2000. After the last crit, I knew roughly where I was going and that it was something to do with the groynes so I re-did the 1:2000 and picked up the grid more. Made a more sensible 'organic journey line' and this has helped me progress to 1:500.

1:500 still very very rough and black splodgey penned with a too dominant grid now. Trying to draw this up but with the amount of changes I keep making and the fact that I don't have much patience with fiddly hand drawing, I think I may be resorted to CAD. The idea is somewhat frightening esp after I have spent the whole xmas wrestling with Indesign which is like a nimble athlete compared to CAD.

Knole project complete and printed. History booklet almost there. Next Christmas I'm freeeeee!