Barcelona warmup

May 6, 2013 | Leave your thoughts

 

Barcelona architectural sketch to start the day.
It is important when I am working on an architectural illustration commission (involving a more accurate perspective than I normally bother about) that I do a little warm up sketch (I will post a few that I did last week later). This morning I thought I would do some BCN preparation sketches.

I like to prepare and read up as much history/ architectural history as I can so that I know better what I am looking at… and also because by the time I arrive in BCN there will already be other sketchers in the city… it will be a case of hitting the ground running. So much distraction… excitement from meeting other USKers that the time to personally connect with the city might be hard. Last year I was the first to arrive in Santo Domingo. As I didn’t have any spanish and had never been to a developing country before it was a little challenging… but being able to connect myself so personally with the place was very special.

I have been to BCN before – 10 years ago for 1.5 days (before my sketching days) and we managed to visit most of the top Gaudi buildings in the time. I have been a fan of the work of Gaudi since 1989 when I bought my first book on him (the photos in this book are all so grimy – it was before they cleaned them up)… but there is a lot else to see. AND the wonderful Catalonian over the top decoration is exactly my cup of tea in terms of what I want to sketch!

So… how much do I prepare for? I don’t want to kill any excitement from discovery when I am there… but I also want to be prepared mentally to tackle very complex architectural subjects….
Thinking that I will try to find some buildings that won’t be on my hit list to sketch or that I have visited before.

I have a feeling I am incoherently rambling tonight…

Anyway- I thought it might be useful to share my secrets (they are not secrets at all)… my approach.

Rule No 1 (which applies to any architectural subject) Look at the structure and don’t get distracted by the details. Look, look, look first! Try to make sense of it (if you can! some of Gaudi’s work doesn’t fit in the category of making sense!) and then try to map out the main structural components.

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