LaCrosse, WA Youth, Teen & Senior Center

Crossroads to Posterity is about generations coming together, which happened to be the force behind my concept on this design. These rock homes were once important structures in the town of LaCrosse and once served as homes for some within the community. The homes, old service stations and bunk houses exteriors are covered in Basalt Rock that is straight from the Palouse here in WA. As time has gone the rocks are beginning to fall and crack, needing immense repairs, but will stay on the exterior to preserve their importance. The final product created was a home for both teens and seniors directly located to one another for a connection between the past and future of the town. Behind these homes is a local park with a pond, lots of seating, and fire pits, around this park is a pathway for walking that features basalt rocks within the pavement to continuing connecting past and present. A playground sits next to the homes for children and families, a basketball court is located next to the playground for revenue opportunities with sporting competitions. The service station has become a local gathering event center for LaCrosse and the surrounding communities. The old garage door will stay to show its past functions as well as lead to the main movie room and arcade system. The reception will serve to rental sports equipment located inside the service station. This community based project brought on the opportunity to work with a rural town that really wants it to thrive to be more than it is, while preserving historical structures that mean a lot to them. The implementation of this design could bring forth the chance to expand the LaCrosse community in becoming more than a small railroad and farming town, it is going to turn into a spot that all travelers will want to pull off the highway and come see.

Ride, don't Walk!

Doing an exercise about what it is like to live life in a wheelchair, was really a good thing to experience. People everyday have to deal with places that are unable to accommodate for their disabilities, when it is not too difficult to add ADA requirements, especially if it is a brand new space that can be created from the ground up. Don't get me wrong, this was a challenging exercise, it is not easy moving around in a wheelchair for a long period of time; dealing with doorways that are not even wide enough to fit your arms through, or bathrooms that you can't even enter the handicapped stall and turn around, you have to back out. I learned that those out there with disabilities, are strong people to be using all their strength everyday to push themselves around and even doing things that may require help, but they do not need it. While riding in the wheelchair in one of the learning building here on campus, it really did not accommodate well for special needs, there was not enough turning space. What they did have was automatic doors for those handicapped. Accessible design I believe should be available to everyone, although that may not be the case, I know it is difficult to accomplish with costs. Maybe depending on how often the building is used by the disabled can determine whether accessible design should be an addition to the building. I do not see there really being a cost to our society if we do not all able to make this accessible design contribution. Although, in this day and age, many baby boomers are getting to a retiring age, which means a possible need for accessibility in more locations than we have now. Accessibility can, in the long run cause more questions for business's without it from those that need that access. That would then possibly cause that business to have to add on those ADA requirements, costing them more money than when they may have started the design. These are some images of my experience being in the accessible environment. As well as a sketch from a Cafe, coffee pick up stand.

Main Sketching

Napkin sketches are not easy due to the flair pens thickness on such a thin paper material, it tears more than you would like.

Kitchen detailed sketch is one that was truly fun for me to do. I enjoyed all the little detailed that could be added.

The value of an interior is important to be aware of. For this sketch one has a thicker just in pen detail and the other I did with drawing pencils with different levels of lead which helped show the vales intensities.

I really enjoyed this one-point perspective drawing. I choose to draw my apartment building, or at least part of it. I decided to add the color pencil to the drawing so that it would show what exactly was being viewed and what was in the distance. If I draw it again I will add more of the smaller details to the sketch.

This two-point interior sketch was hard to start, but once I got my angles correct I was able to draw what was within my gaming room to a perspective with distinct shaded areas.

Main Sketching

Contour drawing, it is not easy to get the right shape without it looking to big or too small. Something for me to continue to work on.

The use of negative space creates an interesting look to the image when it had no specific detail. These leaves were all very rounded ones and laying over one another.

This Shadows and Shading sketch has more than one shadow and shaded area along it with the sun beaming almost precisely in the middle of the railing causing them to be on top of one another.

Painting was one my favorite sketches. I've also not had a chance to attempt fruit and paint, especially with contrasts and tones within the fruit and its ability to give them more presence. Along with the dark navy blue background to make the bright colored fruit really pop out. Next time I will had even more contrast to it for more realism.

Chair views of a perspectives, detail and an elevation of a leather rolling chair, next time I think a better view and view point will help the drawing look more in proportion to one another

Field Sketches

This Perspective drawing is slightly off from the vanishing point and thats due to no ruler and not being use to figuring out which technique worked best for me for straighter freehand lines. Next time I think I will try to add more detail to the ground to fix its perspective feeling.

A simple plan drawing of a building that had many pillars. With more time I would have added in the floor detail and counter areas where the dining was.

This one-point perspective was of a hallway that had many doors and many other connecting hallways. This sketch is more of a close up of the hallway with minimal shadows due to sufficient light sources in the building.

This sketch is actually another of the hallway from above on a different day. Just father back for a more distant view. showing that as you get father back there is more shadowed areas and darkened spots where other hallways start along with entries for doors. The ceiling fixtures are curved and detailed with metal rounded squares below and light fixtures in between them. There was more flooring detail present also while sketching back from a distant.

Two-Point Chair

This old school chair was a fun one to sketch at a two point. With all the curved lines and seat detail it was interesting get it all done, although the front right leg I believe should be a little more forward and looks slightly awkward. Shading was necessary with how the interior light was hitting the chair with some dark spots.

Sketchbook

Sketching at this point was still very new to me, a contour of my keys was difficult in that there were so many different curves and straight lines I wanted to edit my lines as I went along.

Drawing without looking at my paper and only my hand, was not easy. Never have done it before, but in the end I found out that keeping a steady hand, and, what I did was tried to move my eyes following my hand at the same pace as my flair pen moving along my paper.

My own take on multiple artists past art work, to try and learn different techniques to sketching. They felt slightly random to me and my pear could use some more detail, but at that time shape was more of the subject than details.

Determining how to put the crumbled paper in my hand and then sketch its mass details was really not easy for me to get down. Hands alone are hard to draw so adding the paper as you can see turned out looking like a goofy shaped ball. I think next time I will maybe try drawing the paper first and then adding the hand to see if that adds shape and form to be seen in the paper.

My first free hand two point perspective sketch, at the time I was not very comfortable doing this without a T-square and my triangle. This turned out looking better than I expected, the building contained a lot of different brick details and very large windows. I enjoyed sketching this two-point.