Grid Enlargement Sketch: Shinto Shrine, Japan

So on our very first day of class, the Professor hands out several stacks of xeroxed architectural drawings and tells us to pick on that we like. I thumbed through them for a bit and found this one of a Shinto Shrine in Japan, by James C. Watkins. It was large enough to fill an 8.5x11 sheet of paper and very nice. I've got a soft spot for Japanese architecture, despite my ignorance of its technicalities so far. Perhaps at some point I'll get to the local Japanese Water Gardens and snap off a good photo spread for the blog. Anyway, after we'd all chosen our pictures we were instructed to grid them and then enlarge them. aCk! After I got home, it took me two hours just to grid both pages with an accurate grid. For the original, I used 0.5 inches, for the enlargement I used 0.75 inches. We were actually supposed to do 1.0 inch enlargement, but our medium was limited to 11x17, and it would have been impossible to satisfy both requirements, so I adjusted my measurement to scale. The result turned out okay, I suppose.

Not counting the two hours spent gridding the thing, the actual drawing part took me about six hours to do. I apologize for the messy scan. The enlargement had to travel rolled up and it's also so large my flatbed required two scans to get it all, then I had to reassemble it in Photoshop. But for the most part, this is what it looked like. I couldn't possibly upload the original pixel size to the blog, so I reduced the sizes to 400 width and 600 width to simulate the enlargement that took place. Of course neither will be evident from the blog post as it resizes them, you'll have to click the images to see the "actual pixel" size. Anyway, the professor was satisfied with the result and she gave me a 49/50, which is very encouraging, though now I'm wondering which of the many flaws my grid enlargement sketch actually lost me a point.

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Friday I'll post a bit about the Golden Ratio.