Landscape Visions

 Some forms and interesting places found throughout Seoul city

 A highway and carpark turned over to urban Greening and city strolls near Seoul Central Station, Korea. The former high-rise roadway is broken up by a weaving arrangement of circular planters, home to oriental Fraxinus, Prunua, Betual and Pinus species. 

  The Design Lab amongst Zaha Hadid's 'Metonymic Landscape' is a beautiful organically formed building which both blends with its accompany landscaping and is interrupted by it. A geometric and ordered concrete bridge passes right through the building, the rectanlinear cityscape piercing the bulbous form; attacked by the cityscape it itself attempts to disrupt. This brings the two different realms of architecture together through a dynamism of action from one form and reaction from another. At such huge scale, this drama is fonomial to be amongst and explore for the external landscape in which this all takes place.  Thinking back to studying organic form for humble old North Place in Cheltenham, how exciting it might be to host such an exciting architectural intervention there. 

  Louis Parsons's series 'The Human Story' (pictured here parts 2,6,9 and 10) are one display at Sanctuary, Francis Close Hall, UoG. This week was quite colour focused, and so this exhibition was useful to record and understand some vivid and expressing colour palettes.  His painting express an energy, illuminated by the white central spaces which graduate through colour to dark extremities. I seemed drawn to turquoise this week and noticed how the subtle purples, beiges and browns here blended into turquoise make it very expressive. It takes on forms of air, water, spirit and energy depending on the subtlety or furiousity of these blends.  I see equally captivating use of colour by talented landscape architectures. It's obvious yet always fascinating how closely art and architecture dance. 

Some quick thoughts on various colour rendering media after experimenting on printouts of Grant W. Reid's work.  Inks: prefer these for line work rather than rendering. Failed to water them down enough in this instance. Was a flippin mess!  Oil Pastels: the almost harsh vibrancey is great, but will have to practise technique as my application of it was poor.  Watercolour pencils: nice washed out effect which I am comfortable applying. However, failed to use them with water to any effect. Will practise further.  Water soluble markers: most effective for a quick render which you can quickly apply some texture and gradient to. Large brush is excellent for pulling washed out colour across walls, lawns etc. A new favourite.   

 Task: practise colour rendering ahead of colour render uni session. Reflection: using watercolour felttip for the first time. Very quick, fun and vibrant results. Very easy to get colours messy or over saturated, and this increases when penning in line work first. Better to photocopy line work then render. Fun practise for quick drawings. Need to work on people as usual, and just more practise with this medium which seems very well suited to sketching. Missed the opportunity in the temple gate drawing to capture 'komorebi' - Japanese term for 'the quality of light through tree leafs'. Would be great to be able to represent this in renders.