3. MY FIRST WEEK

I am exhausted. It’s Friday night and it has been five mind-blowing days. To ‘ease us in’ to our conversion course, Leeds Met provided us with an introductory week.

My emotions went a bit like this as the week progressed: Excitement – Intrigued – Optimistic – Hopeful – Interested – Wondrous – Confused – Stressed – Tired – Worried – Despairing – Calm – Anxious yet determined – Some slight hope that I might be ok!

First off Monday was spent making introductions – we have a great group with people of all ages and all backgrounds; a horticulturist, a background in women’s studies, English literature, a civil engineer, two previous architecture students, a town planning graduate, a previous account manager in a marketing firm and me – architectural history.

Our course leader, Chris and two graduate Masters Landscape Architecture students, Jack and Alex, led the course. They did an amazing job of helping, coaching and guiding us – and most importantly – reassuring and calming us down. Thank you!

MONDAY: Observational Drawing

Apologies for the poor quality of the images, it was late and gloomy outside...

The point of this exercise was to learn an appreciation for different styles of drawing and learn what our own styles may be like. Observational drawing doesn’t have to be a piece of fine art – but it does have to convey a sense of place and character of the space.

TUESDAY: Analytical Drawing

PERSPECTIVAL SPACE – VANISHING POINT – EYE LINE – these are key three phrases I must ingrain in to my head. The first attempt you see is a bad one – I didn’t fully understand the importance of the vanishing point and have no eye line. As a result it looks a bit like an attempt at cubism by a toddler. My second attempt was better – but it still took me so long to draw out and grasp the perspectives. Some good tutorials can be found on youtube.

WEDNESDAY: Plans and Scale

Rough plan of one of the squares in the Leeds University Campus - it proved quite tricky as there were many different levels due to various steps, some running in to each other, some sloping down to the ground level, all around the square.

After a quick pep talk given to us by our tutors, we went outside to the Leeds University campus and in teams ‘surveyed’ the site – guestimating and pacing out our sections – producing a rough plan and then when we got back to the studio, we produced a scale drawing which we then all combined together to make a larger group plan of the whole site.

THURSDAY: AUTOCAD

Luckily for me, I had already done an AutoCAD course so I had a vague idea of what was going on – a vague idea. It will take me a wee while to get used to it but I have no doubt that once I know to use it, I'll also be very thankful for it.

FRIDAY: Plan Graphics and Axonometrics

The main point of the day was for us to practice scale plans (1:100) and elevations/sectional elevations….

And we also had to do some axonometrics (basically a projection from the plan).

All in all, it has been a wonderful week – very enlightening. Ok Ok I’ve thrown up my hands once or twice and thought “oh my god, I don’t get it” but its only been a week. It seems a tad ridiculous that I am supposed to be up to BA standard by June but if it wasn’t doable the course wouldn’t be available right? Right?! I’m up for the challenge and although it’s going to  be very hard, I know its something I want to do so...here goes!