Sarah ChangeziArchitecture · Bombay

Sheet 06Studio studiesSemesters 1 and 2At the scale of the hand

Basic Design

Six first-year studies in composition, colour and material. In five of them a drawing had to become an object: a card model, a painted ball, folded cubes, a tile and a frame of hanging chain.

06.1 · Semester 1 · Corrugated card · colour studies

Journey to Unity

The second corrugated-card model, Journey Beyond, seen at an angle: curved and wavy card walls with cut openings rise from a yellow base around a single upright dowel.
01Model 02, Journey Beyond: corrugated card on a yellow base.

I reduced a free composition of lines, circles and a square to the few marks that held it together, then built what survived in corrugated card.

The feedback on the first model asked for a stronger focal point and more variation in height. In the second model, Journey Beyond, I made the curves taller, paired the rings and left the ribbed edge of the card showing.

The initial composition: red, orange and blue lines, circles, a triangle and a square overlap freely on a white sheet.
02Play of elements: initial composition.
The reduced composition in pencil: a few circles, crossing lines, a wavy line and a square kept from the first design, ready to be built in three dimensions.
03Play of elements: reduced composition.
Card pieces cut from traced paper templates and laid out on a cutting mat before assembly.
04Making: pieces cut from templates.
A long band of corrugated card bent into a curved wall and stood on traced paper over a cutting mat while the first model is made.
05Making: bending the card wall.
Two corrugated card rings glued into the yellow base of the second model, with cut card strips laid around them.
06Making: setting the paired rings.
Journey Beyond from above: two interlocking card rings and a sweeping wavy band divide the yellow base into ribbed and smooth surfaces.
07Model 02 from above.

Play of colours

Same lines, three colour schemes.

With the lines fixed, only the colour changes: a dark region gathers weight, a contrasting one comes forward.

The reduced composition painted in black and white only, the circles and curves reading as solid and void.
The same composition painted in shades of yellow ochre against black, with translucent overlapping circles.
The same composition painted in orange, blue-grey and violet.

06.2 · Semester 1 · Acrylic on a ball · after Augustus Pugin

An August Globe

The globe, in five photographs

An ornamental composition after Augustus Pugin, laid out on four tapered gores, painted flat on an A1 sheet, then painted again onto a ready-made ball.

On paper you can see the whole pattern at once. On the globe you have to turn it: a spire comes forward, a rose window slides away round the side, and the bands meet differently every time.

Pencil layout of the four gores with purple lines planning the bands that cross them and brown spires along the bottom.
09Gore layout sketch.
The four painted gores laid flat: spires and city silhouettes rise from black bases into blue skies crossed by tracery bands, a rose window and stained glass.
10Flat gore composition, acrylic on an A1 sheet.
Two stages of painting the flat gores: first the blue skies and black skylines around blank pencil outlines, then the tracery, rose window and patterns coloured in.
11Painting stages of the gores.

A 3D model, made for this site from my drawings.

06.3 · Semester 2 · Poster · pencil, ink, torn paper

Capturing Core: The Tree of Colors

The Tree of Colors poster: a pencil and ink tree with wrapped branches, notes on elements and principles of design, a natural-dye legend and torn painted papers along the bottom.
12The Tree of Colors, poster.

A poster made in response to The Tree of Life, an installation I saw at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. The tree is drawn in pencil and then in ink, wrapped and patched like the original, with notes on the elements and principles of design around it.

Along its edge, torn papers I painted carry the colours and textures of the installation home.

The tree traced in pencil with coloured notes naming the elements of design, form, space and colour, and the principles, variety, movement and balance.
13Drawing stage with design notes.
The tree drawn in ink alone: wrapped trunk, patched bark and branches tied with strips of cloth.
14Ink line drawing of the tree.
Close view of the poster's torn painted papers: yellow with grey sprigs, blue stripes, pink, lilac and orange layered edge to edge.
15Detail: torn painted papers.

06.4 · Semester 2 · Painted card cubes

Meandering Intersection

Model 05: open and solid card cubes in pinks, reds and dark browns climb from a heavy base towards a small slatted cube at the top.
16Model 05, The Meandering Intersection.

When does a cube become a space? I planned the kinds of unit, from open to the sky to enclosed, painted them as flat nets, folded them and stacked them five different ways.

The fifth arrangement keeps its weight low and opens as it climbs: solid cubes at the base, slatted and open ones at the top, where the eye can pass straight through.

Pencil notes planning the cube types and their sizes: a cube open to the sky, its hollow and solid parts labelled, and an enclosed one with openings on two sides.
17Planning the cube types.
Painted cube nets in pink, red and dark brown with square and slotted openings, laid on yellow paper before folding.
18Painted cube nets.
Model 01: a low cluster of solid and open cubes in pink, red and brown on dark paper.
19Arrangement 01.
Model 02: cubes stacked into a narrow tower with a slatted cube tilted at its middle.
20Arrangement 02.
Model 03: tilted cubes balanced edge to edge into a low ridge that peaks at the centre.
21Arrangement 03.
Model 04: tilted open and slatted cubes heaped on two solid bases.
22Arrangement 04.

06.5 · Semester 2 · Pattern study · a painted 20 × 20 cm tile

Forging Patterns

The final 20 by 20 cm tile: pale blue lattice, leaves and flowers on a red ground, the pattern rescaled from the Indian source design.
23Pattern transferred to a 20 × 20 cm tile.

I traced an ornament from Henry Wilson’s Pattern and Ornament in the Arts of India, recoloured it, repeated it into bands, distorted its scale, and finally painted it onto a 20 × 20 cm tile.

At that size the brush has to keep the line between figure and ground that the pencil studies worked out.

The ornament traced in fine pencil: rows of stars and rope borders around a central floral panel.
24Tracing the source pattern.
The traced ornament repainted in red and pale blue: a central panel of scrolling flowers framed by star and rope borders.
25The pattern in my own colours.
The same motifs rearranged and repeated into horizontal bands of panels, stars and rope borders.
26Pattern created by repetition.
The square pattern repainted at a distorted scale, its central flower and diamonds enlarged on a red ground.
27Pattern from a distortion of scale.
A sheet half painted: red and blue borders finished on one side while the floral panel is still in pencil.
28Painting in progress.

06.6 · Semester 2 · group work · Chain in a steel frame · group studio

An Entanglement

The Flight: steel chains hang in loose loops inside a black-lined frame, with small white cloth bundles tied along them like birds.
29The Flight, chain installation (group work).

Our group hung steel chain inside a gridded frame against black cloth, where it sags, crosses and gathers. Each arrangement leaves a different shape of empty space in the frame.

We made three arrangements: The Flight, Solidarity in Chaos and Web of Lies. The plan and perspective studies were drawn before the chains went up.

Solidarity in Chaos: dense chain catenaries hanging from a gridded steel frame against black cloth.
30Solidarity in Chaos (group work).
Web of Lies: chains pulled taut into an angular web across the frame, lit from below.
31Web of Lies (group work).
Pencil plan of a chain arrangement: chains drawn link by link crossing a square frame like a web.
32Plan study.
Pencil perspective of chains looping down from the grid of a cube frame.
33Perspective study.
A second pencil plan, chains looping across the square in broad crossing curves.
34Plan study, second set.
The first chains hung in swags from the gridded top of the steel frame, in front of black cloth.
35Making: first chains on the frame.

In three dimensions

Lifted off the page.

3D models made for this site from the photographs and sheets of four studies.

Basic Design, Rizvi College of Architecture. An August Globe is an ornamental study after Augustus Pugin; Forging Patterns adapts a motif from Henry Wilson, Pattern and Ornament in the Arts of India; An Entanglement is group work.