Tree Houses and Other Things...

Tree Houses.

These are pages and images from my sketch book where I am developing my project based on tree houses:

Initial doodle of a tree house which made me want to expand on the idea of tree houses and subsequent mind map where I thought about different aspects of tree houses such as shape, style, materials etc.

More initial doodles.









I researched different types of shelters huts and houses as well as general architecture, to give me some more inspiration and ideas to design my own tree houses. From this I realised that I prefer ed certain styles of shelter-the high up, precarious looking, ramshackle type usually involving wooden planks.





From there I began to sketch out designs for tree houses or off-ground huts, taking aspects from the buildings I had seen in my research and mixing them up.

First designs.

'Tree Cone' design.
This is one of my favourite designs, inspired by a wire underskirt I saw in a magazine.

Off ground huts.

A series of designs for off ground huts not involving trees. The texture of the layered planks and the direction they lie in was the most important aspect for me in these designs, inspired by Earl Harvey's 'Tree huts'. (The smaller huts around the sides are other alternative versions.)

I particularly like the grass growing on the roof in some of these designs. On the first and third page I started experimenting with using watercolours to colour my designs.

'California Barn Tree House'.

This tree house was inspired by the traditional and simple wooden structure, the California barn, which I came across information about in my research. Here I have tried to show how I want the back to contrast with the traditional front, being more modern and abstract. I also wanted to concentrate heavily on the a-symmetrical aspect of the barn.

More, less developed, designs.

Tree drawing practice.

I practiced drawing trees in this certain cartoony style, giving them very long thin trunks and large full areas of greenery, which I thought suited my ramshackle houses. I coloured them in autumn colours to make them more charming.

Computer drawings:

For these images, I used Google Sketch Up to draw my tree cone and barn designs.

I think they have a certain appeal because of the fact that they do not actually make sense, but they are laid out as if they were real architectural plans. I intend to develop this idea further with more research-looking at blueprints and plans etc. and by making larger more intricate designs that make even less sense, possibly playing with scale.

As part of my designs I also drew some intersections of tree houses.

Intersections:

First sketch of an intersection.
Finished, coloured intersection using water colour paint, ink, pen, gel pen, pencil and Photoshop- (to correct colour outside of the edges and smudges on background).

Other Things. (side project)

I recently visited The Ropery- an art gallery in Barton where I came across the work of Lincoln artist Alison Read. Read makes prints often involving animals and I bought this card:

Read's work inspired me, and although it is not similar to my own, it made me think about my own work, and i thought that the style of drawing and painting I had been using might be suited greetings cards. I think the style I have drawn the buildings in is quite charming and would work well on a card. I have now started to do more drawings in this style, some of tree houses, some moving away from the subject of tree houses, and I intend to make some greetings cards featuring my images as a side project.