Trees ~ The Ponderosa

Today I tried to use Google Sketchup's powerful utility with components to attempt - at least partially - to draw a Ponderosa pine tree. I started out with a simple pentagonal pyramid stretched up to 35 feet and then worked on imitating where boughs appeared. The have a certain character at different heights. some more vertical some underslung and s-shaped in search of sunlight. Here is one set of boughs about mid-way in this illustration. I stacked them - also on a pentagonal arrangement - as they seem to do. I have not gone so far as to measure proportions where branches occur or their angles. This was just from all I could glean looking out the window.

Icosa?

I don't know if I have a new post yet on this. I keep trying to find a model that has gnomic projections from 20 equal sides. It is vexing when checking the top and bottom hemispheres by di-hedral angles and the middle section pieces are longer than the ones for the tops and bottom pieces.

Pressing on, I am interested in making articulated surfaces curving from the vertices, imagining Buckminster Fuller's "tensegrities" at work.

Editing Yesterday's Illustration

I don't know if this looks any better than the one I tried yesterday, but I tried putting the photograph import virtually 30 miles in the background and worked on making the foreground more believable in relation of cars in the parking lot. The background is no longer transparent as there is no way it could cast a shadow. I also made the shadows correspond to shadows seen in that import.

Siting Illustration

Here is a siting illustration where I have contrived a background that works with afternoon shadows.

This perhaps reveals how I've done it, importing a photograph onto a vertical plane that simulates the angle of the mountains. I did have to make the opacity of it 69% so that the photo would not cast a shadow onto the drawing.

Concave Sides on an Icosahedron

Last week's interest: an icosa with concave sides.

Icosahedron Squashed Into A Tent

I don't know where I finally stumbled onto it.

Icosahedron Studies

In working on icosahedron studies lately I've found better methods to make measurements come out more exact, which with these is very important.

I've developed a small table-sized model in both inches, and metric.

And then I scaled one up to human scale for, say small outdoor greenhouse use.

The last version is an extrusion along the pentagonal faces in two different diameter tubes.

Back To the Three-Dimensional Weaving

Today I dabbled for a few hours back into the Icosahedron after becoming little more versed in manuvering things from practice managing components and groups while drawing a timber-frame home. Things went a lot faster.

This is where I left off, attempting to weave tubes over and under each other expanding the space between three units over a triangular face. This I dropped to attempt getting them to interlace on the edges of pentagonal faces.

The whole procedure arises out of creating an arc's path to travel over. I use the "follow" tool on google Sketchup for this.

At this I should have known the tautology of odd versus even in terms of weaving. The faces I am attempting to connect are five, and so one cannot close the circle with alternating two ups and three downs.

Above, the final size of the armature. This would put a sculpture at approximately five meters in diameter. I may yet scale it down for further study purposes.

Detail.

Patriot Pizza

Uncomfortable Chair

Duchamp's Chess Pieces

On a chessboard with two-inch squares.

Sketches That Show Visualizations That Don't Work Well or Fail

I started by setting up a deeper loop than I've tried before and extruded it across the diagonal of a square. Then I turned a couple back to back and rotated one ninety degrees.

This started out well enough.

This shows where I prepared the backsides with a different color of this in pursuing a solid object after trimming edges. It also made me consider doing this as an open piece out of fiberglass or thicker sheet metal.

There are some interesting lines flowing around, but even the policeman is sensing trouble.

Adding a third set of faces and another color creates a complicated mess.

Deliberate Wandering

I tried to imagine a quarter of a sphere limited within the space of a cube.

I now imagine encircling a dodecahedron with undulating tubing. 

Orbitals

I've let my imagination wander a bit, but still am stuck inside a cube.

First I thought about atomic structure, that is, as we follow it mythologically. 

Then I constrained the idea of electron movement within the cube. What has four electrons? You know what? I flunked Physics, so i don't actually know.

Finally, I developed a band crossing the poles of a diagonally situated elliptical spheroid (diagonal across the cube in four directions), and then made the rest of it transparent.

Two Sphericals

Octahedron - Two-inch Waves, Five Interval

This was a start today. Perpendicular waves to each face. Looks very static. I'm contemplating sending the waves along a different direction.

Reclaiming A Piece Set Aside For A While

This one is something I did not complete intersection on the third axis having considered  certain implausible use of what woudl come out of it. This is a combination of that, after adjusting the third intersection, which produced internal voids. Using a full amplitude wavy plane across a solid was one of the more dramatic pieces in terms of depth of "cut". I don't usually like making these polychrome pieces, and instead prefer one solid color or material, with or without some kind of uniform texture.

Zippered Egg and a Vacant Parcel Suitable For a Sculpture Park

A while back before I knew more about how to draw on Google Sketchup I investigated a vacant parcel nearby the City Park in Pueblo, Colorado, and so in looking back into it I also dug out one of the first things that I drew, a sphere with a vertical fissure that parted along  simple, global lines. I called it "Zippered Egg". And while the library took Google Sketchu[p off most of the computers at the public library (the only access to the internet for me at this time) I am still interested in repurposing this  marginal land for this purpose.

I also looked into different styles of presentations. The one above uses a masonite baclground.

This one is a wide line sketchy version.