Is a pad and pencil part of your workflow.

[heni30]

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-the-doodle-improve-your-focus-and-memory-1406675744?mod=trending_now_3

 

I know I'm always making sketches/notes and diagrams calling out materials, etc. It's therapeutic and actually augments the comprehension/problem solving thought processes, I think.

 

In an office I working in a young intern was asked to sketch out some design ideas; he quickly opened Illustrator and began sketching away with his mouse.

[Ernest Burden III]

In a word, yes.

[Zdravko Barisic]

Since cave man....yes!

[heni30]

I wonder if most people here were prolific artists when they were kids? Like compulsively drawing all the time.

 

I was always in charge of the Thanksgiving mural in grade school but one time I put a jet overhead strafing the celebration - teacher was very perturbed.

Edited August 1, 2014 by heni30

[CliveG]

Hell yes, it's impossible for me to work without piles of scrap paper and a nice soft pencil.

 

I just wish I was better with them: I worked with a 70 year old architect once who could communicate more with 4 or 5 pencil lines than I've ever seen before. We produced a very technical $30 million building from a single sketch of his - just like that, a dozen lines and a squiggle person for scale and his work was done! It's a genius that is gradually and sadly dying from our practices.

[Justin Hunt]

all the time, but it is usually nothing to do with the project I am working on or even architecture for that matter. I do some of my best sketches while waiting for buckets to finish chasing each other around the screen.

 

jhv

[Corey Beaulieu]

Sketching for artistry is one thing and a valuable skill I think, but more than that, planning out designs, models, scripts, anything is a key component to getting things right the first time. No amount of knowledge of software will ever be faster than your hand-eye coordination.

 

A well planned image will be completed faster and as we all know, time is money.

 

Your intern likely thinks that he/she knows AI so well that they don't need the pen and paper, but as we all know, there are few better than us at communicating ideas with a computer and likely all of us will tell you that a pen and paper are step one.

[Chris MacDonald]

Rarely, though I do have a go at any possible opportunity because I find it to be so theraputic and helpful with conveying thoughts, it's just that the opportunity to sketch hardly ever arises.

 

I'd say I was "okay" at drawing/sketching, but nothing like I've seen some people do. Here's a doodle I did whilst rendering:

 

 

Whilst we have a dozen or so architects and lots of architecture students in house, there is one architect at our practice that is able to convey an incredible amount with just a few lines. No fancy shading, no dead straight lines. It always amazes me how he is seemingly able to put so little into his sketches yet pack so much information into them.

[RyderSK]

I used to be so good at drawing, did it whole life, mostly buildings, cityscapes. Now I honestly can't write my own name even. Everything I do with pencil/pen looks like it was given to dog. Sometimes I find it funny sometimes bit sad.

 

I don't think the skill is so essential as people make it to be, it's one of these things stretched into mythical proportions. There are some absurdly talented 3D artists who completely lack the coordination to do it.

I would love to gain the practice back, but so do with many other things, but there is just little time for everything in life. Something also goes/gets lost.

[heni30]

I think it's important and worthy of mythical proportions because it's one of the primal architypical activities that we indulge in as humans.

 

Like building a house with your hands as opposed to putting together a modular structure with a crane.

 

There's a classical painting of "the first drawing" which is a woman tracing the shadow of her lover's face profile cast on a wall by a candle, but I like Adolph Loos' take better:

 

"The first ornament that was born, the cross, was erotic in origin. The first work of art, the first artistic act which the first artist, in order to rid himself of his surplus energy, smeared on the wall. A horizontal dash: the prone woman. A vertical dash: the man penetrating her.

 

The man who created it felt the same urge as Beethoven, he was in the same heaven in which Beethoven created the Ninth Symphony."

 

(now you'll look at a catholic cross in a whole new way)

Edited August 5, 2014 by heni30

[Ernest Burden III]

(now you'll look at a catholic cross in a whole new way)

 

Uh ... thanks.

 

Yeah, well, drawing is important but only in the sense that it communicates something. You can just as easily do that with a CG image. However, drawing is paleo, it is old, it is part of what defines us. So it is hard to dismiss, even in the light of more precise methods. The human hand and voice have launched us to who we are. Walk away from these at your peril.

[Justin Hunt]

Does drawing make me a better 3d artist? Not directly, as I never draw what I am modeling, but I would be lost if I couldn't draw. It is my main form of expression. Whilst I may go for months not picking up a pen or brush, there comes a time when I just have to draw something, even if its just a scribble. Once I start I cant stop, often hours pass with out me realizing. I am exhausted and my head pounds, but I feel great.

 

If I had the guts I'd be drawing full time

[heni30]

^ Gauguin was a 33 year old bank teller when he dropped everything and went to Tahiti. You can still do it!

[heni30]

Yeah, well, drawing is important but only in the sense that it communicates something.

 

Several people have mentioned the therapeutic aspect; just doing it because it feels good to feed those paleo genes we're carrying around.

Edited August 5, 2014 by heni30

[Justin Hunt]

buy me a ticket to Tahiti and I'll do it

[eagle_ear]

I worked with a 70 year old architect once who could communicate more with 4 or 5 pencil lines than I've ever seen before.

 

BANG! POW! That's what I'm talking about right there.

[Ernest Burden III]

^ Gauguin was a 33 year old bank teller when he dropped everything and went to Tahiti. You can still do it!

 

At 33, Mozart had less than two years to live.

[M V]

I wonder if most people here were prolific artists when they were kids? Like compulsively drawing all the time.

 

I was always in charge of the Thanksgiving mural in grade school but one time I put a jet overhead strafing the celebration - teacher was very perturbed.

 

Always drawing. I had notebooks upon notebooks of doodles. Markers, crayons, pencil. I drew in all of my mom's nursing books. I remember when Bob Ross would come on I would get so excited, run to my room, get my cheap watercolor pans, and begin to paint "happy little things".

 

I hope we are all here because we are artists and not because we are computer geeks. Well, a little geek is ok.

[Ernest Burden III]

when Bob Ross would come on I would get so excited...

 

Props to you for admitting this. My goodness, what an odd guy that was. Maybe we should all be smoking what ol' Bob Ross was smoking.

[Justin Hunt]

high on life

[heni30]

gotta love that 'fro. (Afro hair style for people not familiar with usa urban slang)

 

Edited August 7, 2014 by heni30

[heni30]

interesting article by Graves..............

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/architecture-and-the-lost-art-of-drawing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0