Jessie Kathy Interiors

This course has improved the knowledge and skills I need for an interior design career. Not only have my drawing skills improved, but I have also obtained knowledge in planning and representing a clear and understandable design. The fact that the first few weeks of the semester were centered around improving drawing skills helped immensely when it came to our final cafe presentation. I enjoyed the final cafe project the most and I appreciated seeing how much my skills and my classmates' skills improved. I thought the presentation experience was successful in that I got great advice back that I can use in future course work.  This course was the first insight I've had into my interior design career (both educational and occupational). After completing this course, I feel that I am definitely in the right major and I am extremely excited to see how the rest of my educational career pans out at the University of Florida.

For my cafe, I'd like to make a comfortable environment that may make them feel at home. Since most of the student population lives in either a dorm or an apartment, I wanted to have an outdoor inspired cafe that makes you feel like you are relaxing in your own backyard. Pallet benches, lawn like accessories, lots of greenery and an organic wheat-grass juice bar will all contribute to this laid-back nature feel.

I enjoyed this exercise as I got to be creative with the materials. I need to work on my wood flooring a little more, so I'm going to ask Dana for some advice! Also, my tiles could be a little more straight, but over all I am happy with how this turned out.

I had a lot of fun doing these floor plans as we were allowed to be more creative. I decided to title my demo house as "Luxury Loft" because its a cute, small oasis. I struggled with laying out the furniture in an efficient way. I do think my measurements and lines came out better than the "My Swamp House" floor plan though.

I struggled with the spacing of measurements on the My Swamp House floor plan. Practice makes perfect though as I saw a great improvement whenever I did the My Demo House floor plan. I realized after we had class the other day that I needed to add dimension to my closet as it is confusing that it seems like it opens up to the wall.

I found the section labeled "Shade and Shadow" in chapter 1 to be most helpful. I never thought to think of shade and shadow as two different things while drawing.Remembering that all the shadows of all the verticals in the drawing will fall in the same direction is important. I feel that I sometimes struggle with this concept while shading my drawings so keeping this in mind will definitely be helpful. Casting edges should always be considered when shading certain surfaces. Sitting down and analyzing where the sun is will be truly helpful.

In chapter 2, I found the "Accents" section to be extremely helpful in that it gave useful tips when trying to achieve final touches. Metallic pens and markers can be extremely beautiful in a drawing when working as small touches and glisten convincingly as they catch the light. I think this would be extremely helpful when I am rendering a kitchen or bathroom. The only downfall that I read about is that they will not copy effectively on a color photocopier and must be added to each copy.

Chapter 3 covered a variety of subjects including shape, figure, form, perspective, and structure. Ching first establishes that from makes reference to both internal and external structure and establishes a sense of a 3-D mass or volume. To accomplish giving an object its form, we start with a simple shape, just as stated in the third video. By simplifying everything, you are given the fundamental shape for an object. This simple shape turns to an analytical drawing, such as a cube, to establish a volumetric framework for the object. These lines represent the underlying geometry and structure on an object. When drawing an addition to a surface (such as a lens on the face of a camera) another analytical drawing of a cube can be added just for the lens. The same process can be done with subtraction. I found analytical drawing to be extremely helpful when I was drawing my glass bottles and cylindrical objects on my desk at home. By using this technique, I noticed that the object I was drawing was much more proportional than if I tried to freehand draw it. Drawing both unseen and visible part of an angle helps to make it easier to gauge visible angles. All lines remain visible in the final drawing to intensify the depth of the image and reveal the constructive process by which it was generated and developed.

Another technique that helped to give my images more dimension was the use of shading on an object. As practiced in the Euclidean rendering exercise, each shape portrays light differently. Techniques for portraying light on different surfaces was expressed in videos 1 and 2. For example, when a cylinder is lit, it is darkest at the bottom, has a streak of light through the middle and has light shadow at the top. I wish I would've listened to this advice more while I was drawing, as I didn't use this technique while shading my cylinders. This would've definitely given my drawing more depth.

Chapter 2 in Ching's book explores how your eyes see light and how your brain perceives it. "The light and dark patterns we see emanate from the interaction of light with the surfaces of objects around us." The term value was introduced as the most critical thing when it comes to drawing and shading. Value is the relative darkness or lightness of a color. We can show value in our drawings through techniques such as: hatching, cross-hatching, scribbling and stippling. All techniques were practiced in our assigned homework for the week. The best advice I learned for these techniques through the reading was that the most important characteristic for these types of shading is the spacing and density of the strokes or dots. Larger spaces portray a lighter area shading while smaller spaces portray a darker area. Hatching and cross hatching are my most favorite techniques as I find them the most simple to use while adding value. Another technique introduced in the reading was mapping, in which inquires reducing many tonal values into just a few. I have yet to try this technique but I plan on doing so in the future.