YUNNAN: My first China Trip

Sat 10 Nov 07 with Siam Society from Bangkok to Kunming. The first stop was at a chinese temple heavy with sight, sound, smoke and prayers. Out side by the street was another story of dashing street children trying to attract for your attention in hope of a few coins. Understandable but kind of hard to react for any new visitors. Dear boys and people, I would like to be your firends, give me time to adjust, alright!

After some walking around, found a more quiet corner and managed to get a glimps of the temple of my own perception: brush pen on water paper in a quick! With a color wash in hotel room later on, the below is the result.

Sun 11, we took a boat in Er Hai lake to a small fishing village.

A view of the courtyard in one of the temple in fishing village.

Then back to the local market in town to be part of their usual activities from flowers to chilies and more..

A traditional tea ceremony and display of Bai costume, whilte is the traditional color here.

What SKETCHING is to an architect.

Architects do tons of sketches in the course of their work. You usually start your thinking cab with doodles or sketches, trying it out on paper before firming it up to something more comprehensible. However, all this early stage creation material rarely survive the waste basket: they get thrown away as soon as the next piece comes along. What a pity! They are different kind of sketches but just as interesting! Some sketches are expressive, even bright or colorful although most are full of repeated lines and, quite often, blobs of blacks.

Architects also do lots of what's known as "perspective". Perspective that's more common and appreciated is a kind of "commercialised" or final perspective rendering aiming to convince the general public. Architects also get their design illustrated, more often than not by yet another group of specialists or artists, as part of their presentation to the clients. All these "highly professional and polished" rendering can surprisingly costly to produce.

There are also a "sketchy" type of perspective that is less obvious or known beyond architects' office or studios. This type of perspective is not intended for use to please anyone but, for all it's worth, it is this type of sketches that I feel most valuableAn example of quick sketch as a study of a residential project.Another study of a commercial project at the very early stage.An architectual record of now demolished of Jubilee Theatre along North Bridge Road in Singapore. As the person who did this drawing myself, it is so much more meaningful, visually as well as sentimentally, than any photographic or any other means of recording can ever produced.

Another samples of quick line works study that's good enough to capture the intended desigh direction of the project too.