The Intersection at Penn Ave. and 7th Street

SECTION 1- The Weird Garden

As I stepped on to the intersection between Penn Avenue and 7th Street, I observed my surroundings and was immediately drawn to the “Green” corner as I would call it. The feeling was almost surreal as this part of the intersection was a corner created between the facades of two buildings and was filled with greenery and trees. I crossed the road and made a beeline towards this eccentric part of the intersection and found out that the white trees observed from across the street were actually fake! Much to my surprise, I realized that the white from afar was quite a beautiful sight, yet up close, the artificiality of it was somehow off-putting. Placing this small patch of greenery smack in the middle of the city was ironic in some sense as I found the notion of escaping the man-made metropolis in this small green sanctuary a calming thought yet there was the awkwardness felt by the artificial trees once I was up close. I came to the conclusion that it was some sort of thought-provoking art that highlighted the tension between the natural and the manmade, after all, I realized I was in the heart of The Cultural District.

SECTION 2- Arts and Culture

After some time, I crossed the street and sat down at Agnes R. Katz Plaza, a small resting spot for loiterers and families, in order to take in my surroundings. Sitting here, the hot sun beats down on the intersection, luckily there are trees for shade at my current corner. To my right is a strikingly blue building, a theatre company. I look further down the same street there was a concert hall: Heinz Hall. Then I look across the street directly in front of me, there was a building that looked like it belonged in Broadway NYC and it turns out it was a Theatre for Broadway plays and Disney’s Aladdin is currently on show. I was surrounded by the arts and culture and I realized what made this intersection unique was that it bridged arts, culture and commerce together. The seats in the park and the sculptural rock waterfall were also fun and creative, the seats were shaped like eyeballs and the waterfall was made from layers of stacked rocks.

SECTION 3- Noticing the details

As I sat in the plaza I tried to observe the surrounding environment with my five senses. I felt the slight breeze cool my sweaty body. I heard the sounds of shrieking women and aggressive car drivers, the exhaustive pauses and starts of the bus engines, and the sounds of young children frolicking, the footsteps of busy pedestrians. I smelled the pungent scent of secondhand smoke as workers relaxed and took a smoke break. There were many people who came and went as I sat here, as it seemed like a common spot for congregating but not too the point that it seemed suffocating.

SECTION 4- The yellow bridge

I crossed the road one more time, going back to the same side of Penn Ave. that I originally came from. I stood right next to the traffic light and listened to the automatic voice from the traffic light repeating “Penn Avenue, walk sign to cross” and looked straight down the straight road. A yellow bridge was situated in close proximity, right at the end of Seventh Street. Bikers and cars drove by, beeping and honking there way down the street as they came off the bridge. The intersection is connected to the physical bridge that allowed people to get to places that would otherwise be inaccessible, but more importantly, this intersection itself serves as a gateway between people, arts, culture, and a growing city.

Quick Sketches + Going back for photos

After reading our intersection narratives in class we had to do quick sketches of the image described the intersections. Below are what my classmates got from the narrative that Chelsea, Dorcas and I came up with. I feel like that most of the drawings didn’t actually capture the main landmarks of the intersections, such as the broadway-esque vibe that I felt from all the theatres, the yellow bridge and the artificiality of the magnolia trees.

It was interesting to look at what our classmates got from our stories and what was noticed most from what we described about the place. A lot of the sketches depicted the interesting greenery and fake magnolias in the middle of an urban area. Quite a few of them had trees but the sketches were so quick it didn’t convey the awkwardness of the area.

The second time around, I went to take photos that captured “the essence” of the intersection. I tried to take pictures from all sides of the intersection so that I would get a multifaceted view of the place. Below are photos that I found crucial to identifying Penn Ave and 7th.

The cluster images capture the essence of this intersection, they embody the view and sights standing from the four different sides of the sidewalks.

The image I chose to base my paper relief off of.

The picture above encompasses the important elements of the place: the bridge, brick buildings, white fake magnolias.

Creating the 2D Relief: Translating from picture to paper.

Before I started with the cutouts, I decided to do traces of two images so I can evaluate the options that I have and limit my self to one. I ultimately decided on the tracing on the white because of how it is more representative of my narrative (the yellow bridge that connects downtown to the suburbs of Pittsburgh), whereas the one on the left is actually an image of a parking lot, something that I did not even mention in my narrative ( I just really liked the composition of the photo that I took).

After tracing on the tracing paper, I used the carbon paper method to transfer the tracings on to white paper by retracing the tracings on the backside of the tracing paper. I realized this method was quite inaccurate and often times my lines wouldn’t appear clearly on the white paper and I would have to connect lines based on what I see from the transfer. I believe that this was one of the reasons that contributed to the poor craftsmanship in this first draft.

The process of creating my first draft.

Cutting the paper was so hard for me and I strained my index finger from doing it. I am hoping my hand will get accustomed to holding a Xacto knife from here on out. Figuring out the layers was also a struggle because I didn’t know what to include and exclude, what is important and not. I think the end result was way to simplified, so for the next draft I will add the details of the windows and extend the road from the bridge to give the image a heavier sense of depth.

The final image of the first draft. (The quality of the photo matches the quality of the relief for a more visceral effect.)

Steve gave me feedback on how to develop the depth of the photo. Some advice I received from Stacey, Steve and Kyle are:

• The area next to the bridge feels too clustered and there is too much going on so I might take out the trees.
• Make the shapes of the cars clearer so they don’t look like obscure animals.

I will also experiment with more layers of paper to build an emphasis on specific layers. An example for this would be to add a layer that would represent the pedestrian pavement instead of the cars, this would give the image more of a sense of direction from the bridge in the background to the buildings in the foreground.

Another noticeable flaw in this first draft is the poor craftsmanship in cutting the paper and the remains of glue residue that undermines the composition. I look to improve in these aspects as I practice cutting and glueing with precision in the next few cuts.

A refined relief.

After struggling with layers, I took inspiration from observing my classmates and decided to do a color layer plan before starting out the cutting.

Color Layering.

This color pre-layering technique helped me greatly with deciding on what I wanted to include and exclude and narrowing down what details are important, such as the windows and the park sign. I took the feedback given to me by Steve and referenced a real car for the cut out, but some how it still came out slight deformed. Part of my experience at this intersection was the repeated automated voice that announced “Penn Avenue, walk sign to cross.” whenever the walk sign lit up, so I decided it was important to include the traffic light in my picture as it is essential to the functioning of an intersection.

Other improvements and additions:

• Removal of trees behind the buildings to emphasize the bridge and buildings more.
• Detail in the bridge arc.
• Road lines to give the road a sense of direction.
• Smaller trees in front of the buildings to highlight the contrast between nature and the manmade structures that densely surround it and lead the viewer’s eye down the road from the bridge
• The cafe in front of the two tall buildings.
• Cleaner cuts and lines. ( I learned that I don’t have to press to hard to cut and going over a line several times will ensure a cleaner cut, however my index finger still hurts.)

Image cut out before adding the pedestrian pavement layer.

Some feedback I received for this version of the relief was that the lines are clean and well cut, however, there is some ambiguity regarding the shape on top of the tarpaulin in the building closest to the viewer. Another suggestion was that I should add another layer for the pedestrian pavement that separates the buildings and the main road as it currently looks unfinished and artificial without it.

I definitely believe that the second draft is a more accurate representation of my intersection, as the bridges and buildings are cut with more precision. The sense of verticality at Penn and 7th is what I wanted to portray in my relief along with the road leading to the bridge thus, I used angular lines to compose my relief.

The Tonal relief.

Our next assignment was to create the relief in 4 different shades of browns. The restricted coloring that we had allowed us to experiment with different shades and tones in different parts. Since my image is meant to accentuate the depth of the road that leads to the bridge, I chose to use the the tonal values to create the motion and direction in my relief, thus I chose to use the dark and light tones based on how sunlight would change the shades of the building walls.

Using a lightbox to see which the tonal values created by the layering of paper to give me a sense of direction with how I choose which tones for specific layers.

After using the light box, I decided that the most efficient way to experiment with the tone colors is to trace my previous relief on to illustrator.

Using Illustrator:

Pros

• Efficient and fast for visualizing and prototyping the final outcome
• Experimenting with different color layouts and compositions.
• Can print out each color layer at once and make cutouts from one sheet of paper.
• Cutting will be more accurate due to computer drawn lines.

I separated each layer into their own colors so that I could all the shapes out from the same layer.

Cons

• You lose the authenticity and the purpose of craftsmanship through the automated process of using a computer software.
• Tracing from a picture or freehand drawing the shapes forces you to observe the relationships between lines and shapes closer, training hand eye coordination in drawing spaces.
• The efficiency of illustrator may cause you to skip over reflecting on what decisions are being made and why they are being made.

If I were to do this again and if I had more time, I would want to attempt to use tracing for the tonal relief instead of illustrator just to see what difference it would make in the final outcome.

Improvements to be made for the next iteration: Lines that part the road are inconsistent, however, they give the road a sense of direction. In response to this, I went back into illustrator to fix the thickness of the road lines to make them more coherent. I got rid of the traffic lights because I felt it was a bit too convoluted in the front and took away attention from the buildings behind it. The perpendicular angle thing above the cafe in the foreground was contextually ambiguous according to a few people so I decided that I will take it out for my next iteration as it isn’t an important element in my relief.

Adding color.

Using the outlines I created in illustrator for the tonal relief, I tried different shades from the 7 different colors given to us as we were required to replace a tone with a color. Below are three that I narrowed down to.

I experimented with two versions of color by replacing them with two tonal colors, the tan in the left one and the dark brown in the right one. I felt that the orange and green felt extremely out of place and overpowering in the sense it drew too much attention away from the composition itself. The navy blue, however, made sense in a way that is corresponded with the dark brown in terms of tonal value, so I decided to use that color.

I decided to re-add the traffic lamp because of its importance to my original narrative and several classmates gave me feedback on how it makes the composition more realistic. However, when I changed the color to beige, it blended right into some of the buildings and windows behind it so I was worried the final cutout piece would also . It looked some parts of the traffic light were obscured so I didn’t know if I should include it in my final

The above is the final version of the intersection relief. I think the final version is very neat and clean, drastically improved craftsmanship from the first draft.

After general feedback on how color affects the composition, movement and setting of the relief, I believe that I used the color to enhance the depth of field, and in doing so, I captured the essence of “journey and commute” in my intersection. However, a significant thing that is lacking in this whole composition is life: humans and cars. The reason why I decided not to include these elements in my intersection is because the cars would cover the line of the road and I realized from earlier compositions that that actually detracts from the depth of field that I wanted to emphasize in this composition.

Reflection.

This entire process was a mixture of confusing and fun. But more importantly it taught me how to re-imagine perspective space from different angles by cropping, how to translate form in reality to form on paper and how to communicate that form on paper so that you still retain the essence of reality.

Looking at tonal value, color value and plain white paper led me to re-evaluate the composition of the intersection space. Starting with the plain white, it allowed me to solely focus on communicating form and composition, to look at Penn and 7th avenue and see if I can translate key shapes onto paper form. Tonal values forced me to think about what elements I want to soften and which ones I want to draw more attention on. With color, I needed to think about the purpose of that color and why it properly replaces the tone it replaces. Each iteration was built off another and without the white or tonal versions, I would not have been able to see which elements I wanted to bring out with color. It’s a frustrating but rewarding process that makes you constantly reevaluate every decision you make until you see sense in the thing you want to communicate. Every decision matters.

Technically, my cutting and glueing skills have improved exponentially since my first draft even though my finger is still strained, but I learned that craftsmanship requires practice and attention to detail, something I will remember for the rest of my design career.