For my Plants in Design class, we’re keeping a journal – the goal of the journal is to document different ways plants are used to enhance built environments which is ultimately what I’ll be doing upon graduation. Fingers crossed the financial recession will be behind us by 2012 when I start looking for a job!
I pulled 3 of my favorite pages out of my journal from last week’s assignment to share. The topic of the assignment was “enclosure” (in terms of plants) and it’s in evidence everywhere I look now. Some work, some don’t and I suppose that’s the benefit of keeping our eyes open – Being able to file away different ways plants work in the landscape for future reference.
For this assignment, we were asked to draw in “plan” (sort of like an aerial view) & section (literally a cross section) to scale. It’s a totally different type of drawing and the scale is really more an approximation since I was measuring the spaces by using my feet as a ruler. It’s a little more technical as far as drawing goes, but it is sort of fun for a geek like me. 
Meanwhile, I picked up 25 lbs of white stoneware clay this afternoon. The Colorado Potters Guild sale is less than 1 month from now and while I don’t have much to show for myself, we are allowing clay jewelry this time around. Guess what I’m making? I really don’t have much time to do much else.
Hey, what do you know? I managed more than 2 posts this week….
~Cynthia
P.S. Tonight we’re going to try a new hot dog stand just a few blocks from our house – Steve’s Snappin’ Dogs. It has something for everyone in the family – big old all beef dog for the hubby, vegetarian dog for Jasmine and Frito-Pie for me! Luckily, I don’t have class tomorrow ;D
Funny watch…
Wow – my every other day posting has turned into every 10 days! I actually have some more journal pages to share – just need to grab my flash drive and I’m way too lazy to do that right now.
Night, from snowy chilly Denver,
Cynthia
Unless you count being a mom, wife, student that is.
Life is happening for sure – it just feels accelerated - is it really almost Friday again? One of the classes I’m taking is called “Plants in Design” which made my head ache during the first 6 weeks of class. We learned how to id plants and had to memorize common names and their Latin names. The latter is what made my head throb – sometimes I’m just not sure how much room my brain has for all this extra info. We had weekly quizzes where we had to identify 15 plants chosen at random by the professor out of the 20 – 30 plants we had learned the previous week. While we only touched the surface on all available plants, we did focus on local native and adapted plants to Colorado and our climate.
Last week, we shifted gears and have started weekly journal assignments. While this relates to landscape design, I was quite relieved to be doing something artistic again and gladly pulled out my water color crayons. Our assignment was to choose a landscape related term and explore that term visually and verbally. Since I have an art background, I decided to analyze color theory and how it relates to the natural and built landscape. I have another page or two to add since I only briefly considered what it would be like to be “color blind” – one of my classmates confessed that he is color blind and gave me more information on how he perceives certain colors. I found out that 52% of men have some version of color blindness – that’s a pretty huge number. Color theory and perception is a huge topic, but I felt like I gave it a good start. For next week’s assignment we will be exploring the topic of “Enclosure”.
Still no clay activity around mi casa. Last weekend was very busy around here, so hopefully, this coming weekend will be more relaxes and allow me to get muddy again so I can bring a few things to the Colorado Potters Guild show in November.
I know my blog is gathering a few cobwebs here and there and with all of my obligations, I find that I’m using Facebook more and more to catch up on everything that is going on with people.
Happy Thursday everyone,
Cynthia
