City life

Adding background tone test

Fog and drizzle and the Wrigley Building

FOG

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

"Fog" is a poem by Carl Sandburg. It first appeared in Sandburg's first mainstream collection of poems, Chicago Poems, published in 1916.

Sandburg has described the genesis of the poem. At a time when he was carrying a book of Japanese Haiku, he went to interview a juvenile court judge, and he had cut through Grant Park and saw the fog over Chicago harbor. He had certainly seen many fogs before, but this time he had to wait forty minutes for the judge, and he only had a piece of newsprint handy, so he decided to create an "American Haiku”

... and ...

From my hotel window I painted and marveled at the fog and drizzle over the Chicago River and above the magnificent Wrigley building. 

Peace and Green Holiday Spirit ...

Sliver tower on 58th Street Manhattan

Beijing CCTV tower once again in purple ...

dà kùchǎ (大裤衩

Every time I see this building, I have to draw it, here's a view from the restaurant level at Hotel Jen...

The CCTV main building is not a traditional tower, but a loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 473,000 m²(5,090,000 sq ft) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building's facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone.  The architect, Ren Koolhaas has said the building "could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition". Because of its radical shape, it's said that a taxi driver first came up with its nickname dà kùchǎ (大裤衩), roughly translated as, "big boxer shorts'.  Locals often refer to it as "big pants". A Chinese critic said that the structure was modeled after a pornographic image of a woman on her hands and knees, which Koolhaas has officially denied.....  From Wikipedia... 

The zeppelin, the pagoda and the walking building ala Ron Herron on the drawing wall in the Gensler Oakland office...

Three objects drawn on the wall in the office...

A look back at the video about Oakland and the ideas of Live, Thrive, Love in the City

http://vimeo.com/douglaswittnebel/work-live-love-thrive-in-the-city-of-oakland-2014

 

 

http://vimeo.com/douglaswittnebel/work-live-love-thrive-in-the-city-of-oakland-2014

...for the love of a Flatiron building in Oakland, a greytone version...First National Bank of Oakland...1907

...all for the love of a Flatiron building in Oakland, a greytone version has been created and tested for a possible larger scale print version or maybe a wall version installation in downtown Oakland...

 

http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-03-10/urban-field-notes-new-drawings-old-buildings

 

 

Above San Pablo and Broadway stands the premier flatiron building of the West Coast, a younger sibling of the more famous Manhattan one. Most of the stories in this building are woven into the exchange of money and finance, Wells Fargo being the most recent bank tenant. The original tenant was the First National Bank of Oakland, in this building complete with safe deposit boxes and a full basement for secure storage of valuables, furs, jewelry and paintings.

 

Built in 1907 after the great San Francisco earthquake, the building was designed by architect Llewellyn B. Dutton, who chose white granite for the lower floors and warm terra cotta tiles for the upper story enclosure, which wraps smoothly around the acute corner next to Frank Ogawa Plaza.

 

design sketches for unbuilt project

a set of design sketches, red ink on yellow post-it notes, for an unbuilt project in California...

Oakland Field Notes cover

Oakland Field Notes cover, a photo by douglaswittnebel on Flickr.

another test cover design for Urban Field Notes

oakland tribune tower colors

oakland tribune tower colors, a photo by douglaswittnebel on Flickr.

a painted view of the wonderful Oakland Tribune Tower in downtown Oakland, part of the Urban Field Notes series

Oakland Bank Building, Comerica, Bank of America, 1907

Oakland Bank Building, Comerica, Bank of America, 1907, a photo by douglaswittnebel on Flickr.

...a night time drawing view of the top of the tower, Bank of Oakland building on Broadway, downtown Oakland, CA...

Urban field notes, painting one

Kicking off the new year of the horse, 2014, with a series of paintings that will be part of a set of urban field notes for Oakland.  The first version or view is of the beautiful and classic Oakland Tribune Tower.  Height 305 feet, 22 stories, tower built in 1923...

rebar Bazooka construction

rebar Bazooka, a photo by douglaswittnebel on Flickr.

Men at work weaving rebar into the core element of a new building on Mission, San Francisco...

Tower Studies view of test post for gif file

 

 

Taking a look at a very very simple try with a gif file format for the tower studies...this might lead to something new and cool...

 

Meeting and presentation in D.C. for Gensler University

...from Thursday to Saturday of last week, the Gensler University group held meetings and discussions that led to the creation of a presentation at noon on Saturday.  There was such a wonderful explosion of creative energy and thoughts within the group breakouts and it was fascinating to participate in the assembly of the best ideas into a one hour synopsis of five months of research and investigation.  More to come in the very near future...

This painting created in adobe ideas on the ipad captures the set up and the audience with video links to other gensler locations.

Mendocino Album

A selection of the painted views from the long weekend in Mendocino, top center create with procreate and sketchbook, bottom center done with procreate, the flanking images drawn with adobe ideas...

Street scene with windmill in Mendocino

...almost every house and building had a windmill, used to provide the power to pump water up into the redwood tank water towers for supply and pressure.  Some of the windmills are still standing relatively intact, sentinels and distinct markers in the town silhouette along with the water towers.  Another adobe ideas piece on the traveling ipad...

Gensler Super Meeting Chicago 2012

Out and over to Chicago, Oakbrook area, for a Super Meeting with over 200 folks from the Gensler group...days and nights of meetings and discussions about the how, when, where, who and why of design in the world of today...these drawings try to capture the essence of some of those meetings...