Project - Gestural Architecture

1.5K
Course In Progress

Project - Gestural Architecture

1.5K
Course In Progress

You'll be assigned two projects to practice gestural perspective. This first one is a little easier, while the second will be mainly for level two, but I encourage everyone to try both. The main focus is on creativity, iterative improvement, and applying your perspective knowledge intuitively.

Level 1

Warm up with a simple doghouse. Use deformation methods to create an interesting shape. Avoid random deformations; make purposeful changes. If a deformation doesn't look good to you, change it.

Then design a more complex building, such as a house, apartment, motel, cottage, or church. Add multiple parts to the building, like a chimney, room extensions, or separate buildings. Apply the deformation methods to give them personality.

  • Make decisions with a purpose but also have fun and explore.
  • Follow your gut and make changes if something looks wrong.
  • Spend time on the project until you're proud of it.
  • Iterate and improve your design; don't just copy my example.
  • Practice multiple times to make it easier.
  • Focus on adding gesture and personality to your forms, not just accurate perspective.

Level 2

For level two, try designing a tree house. This is trickier due to the interaction between organic and inorganic forms, more complex design problem, and lack of a solid foundation.

Deadline - submit by July 9, 2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!

Newest
@bezet
13h
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Looks good! Love the gas station. One thing to still look out for is that the general principles of perspective are ringing true. That's a tricky balance when we are trying to exaggerate, but a worthy endeavor. Keep it up, these look great.
samuel burgos celedon
Dibujando los diferentes tipos de cajas me encontré con muchas dificultades. Sin embargo, dibujando lo que parece ser una iglesia y las casas en los árboles, me divertí mucho. Estoy muy contento con los resultados, pero me encantaría recibir alguna crítica.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
¡Excelentes dibujos! Primero que nada, disculpa mi español, todavía estoy aprendiendo (gracias Duolingo) y estoy usando un traductor. Un comentario: aunque estemos distorsionando las formas, la perspectiva general aún debe tener sentido. Puedes permitirte que algunas líneas estén bastante fuera de lugar, pero la sensación general debe seguir siendo la de una perspectiva creíble. Intenta ajustar algunas de esas líneas para que estén más alineadas. ¡De nuevo, gran trabajo!
C. A. Corbell
Part 2 of my assignment. I'm posting the straight-line layout I did as well (lines were very light so it's Photoshop edge-enhanced). The house is vaguely New Orleans-inspired with balcony, tall front doors and steps, and a tiny garage and yard. I wanted to use curves to make the 'gesture' seem fun and a little loopy. I like the flow of the S-curves from roof through balcony and elsewhere. I'm getting better with confident lines as well.
C. A. Corbell
Part 1 of my assignment - some doghouse-gesture variations.
Rachel Dawn Owens
So much personality in these dog houses! These are beautiful drawings
@brimarie
10d
I finally completed Level 2—such a great experience—I had some trouble with the tree house—in the end, I sketched the house first and then the tree around it, which worked best for me ;-)
Michael Longhurst
Very nice work. I love how much you distorted the perspective, but the way it flows still works. Has a great energy.
Julia
9d
Such a charming work of art! Of course I love the raccoon: he (she?) was the first thing I looked for when you mentioned this work. It was like a little adventure trying to find it, it was a sneaky one! And I love the mushrooms, I feel like they add a lot. Thank you for sharing your process, it was really helpful to see. If it's not a secret, how do you come up with such solid, strong ideas for your works? Do you do thumbnail sketches?
Art Stark
Thanks for posting.
@brimarie
16d
Hello everyone, This exercise was very informative and enjoyable. I created this little village from my imagination and think it's great how this course teaches you to create objects with depth from simple shapes. I welcome all suggestions and criticism and would like to improve. Now I'm really looking forward to moving on to Level 2 and tackling the tree house—that's sure to be very instructive too. I wish you all a wonderful and creative Sunday.
Ash
15d
beautiful!
Rachel Dawn Owens
Wow! This could be a published illustration tomorrow! This is amazing! Thanks for sharing your process too!
Sita Rabeling
Nice! In the 2nd and 4th image...Did the cat chew on those pencils?? 🤣
@ironfern
17d
Hello! The first image is the dog house from the video and some quick studies from the architect Zaha Hadid. Her worked involved plenty of organic shapes as buildings. I then used that as inspiration for a some hotels with plenty of distortions and some organic shapes. I also feel this could be a futuristic EDM venue with different DJs in each building. Any feedback is welcome! Thank you!
@gothamdemon
This was tough but I did it. Any feedback is welcomed.
Abhishek Mukherjee
Rachel Dawn Owens
These look so good! Very nice distorted perspective. Only thing I can say is to push is further if you want. Push the distortions till they break. You can get wild with these drawings.
Luis
1mo
Two drawings for this exercise. In the first one, I wanted the house to look somewhat intimidating. For the second one, I wanted the apartment buildings to look thin and tall and for the house in the middle to look chonky.
@solobo
2mo
Tried to push a taper, but not super happy with it, maybe a bulge would have been better
@brimarie
2mo
In my opinion, you have done a great job with this project.
@pancakequeue
I love your use of line work to show the importance of the tree and tree house.
Aura
3mo
All done with the treehouse. I lowered the angle of the swing like @Patrick Bosworth suggested, but the house still feels unbalanced (I don’t mind that though, it makes the viewer (me) uncomfortable, which I like). I’m not happy with the values, but I think with more practice I’ll get to a place where those look good. Otherwise I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out! Gotta let this one go, if I keep working on it I’m surely going to ruin it. Onward!!!
Melanie Scearce
Wow, this is excellent, @Aura. Your values look great. A simple ink or watercolor wash might be a nice touch to complement what's already there. I get not wanting to overwork it, so that's just an idea you could maybe try in the future. I think it would look good with your technique!
Sofy
2mo
It looks great!
Juan Andres Gonzalez Trejo
after warming up (first image similar to the video), I decided to play with fire and create a house with exaggerated parts and then concluded with the tree house. this project is extremely addictive because of the many things that can be done, I had to lower the idea a little bit because if I didn't end up drawing something to show.
Brad Hewitt
a pretty quick response to the assignment , but i think that is what they are looking for ( to get mov'n on this course with momentum)....
Aura
3mo
Treehouse in progress - I need help before I finish it though! Does it look like it’s tipping back or have I been staring at it too long? And if so how do I fix it? Is the base at too much of an angle?? Ah!!
Patrick Bosworth
Great shape design in the tree, love the simplified straights in the branches! Maybe bring the angle of swing seat closer to eye level so we see less of the bottom?
Gloria Wickman
These were so fun! I really enjoyed thinking about pushing/deforming the boxes to support the mood or idea behind the piece so I decided to go for curvy and bloated for the diner and I went with imploded and angular for the witch's treehouse.
Rachel Dawn Owens
Wonderful design stuff going on here.
Aura
3mo
I feel like I could have pushed it more, but I like the weird perspective and the hatching I did. I love drawing so much! I can’t decide whether I’ll do the tree house on paper or digitally. Or in marker. Or ink. Who knows!!!! Art is fun!
Melanie Scearce
Your excitement is very inspiring :) Glad you enjoyed the process.
Patrick Bosworth
This looks great, fun pushed perspective! You kept it gestural, and got pretty close to maintaining the overall perspective. The hatching and line weight is really well considered, looks great! Be careful of pinching the edges of your ellipses! You want those cross contours to feel like rubber bands wrapped around the cylinder. Check out the Constructing Cylinders and Ellipses Lesson https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-cylinders-and-ellipses/comments and The Cross Contour Lesson https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-cross-contour-on-3d-forms/comments Really nice work! Looking forward to seeing how to approach the next one!
mike mcdonald
I didn’t really like my initial sketch line quality and over all shap, so I tried pulling it in digitally to clean it up for the first time. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to make all the elements work together in perspective. I utilized cross contour lines and that helped, it does still feel like it’s missing something though.
@solobo
3mo
Dog houses in two perspectives with four distortions
@offworld
3mo
L1: Both are kinda based on the example in the lesson with some different elements thrown in. I find that I often catch my errors after taking a photo. Even now, previewing it before submitting I noticed a couple of perspective issues I didn't notice before. Anyway, appreciate any feedback.
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About instructor
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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