Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Interior Design Class Update

Thanksgiving brings to mind for most people pumpkin pie, turkey, lots of fatty starch and even football.  I’m not immune from that thankfulness either.  Thanksgiving prompts me examine my life and give thanks for the things that are in it, too.  There’s the traditional thankfulness for my health, my family and my kids.  But this year, I am adding something new to the mix -- thankful that I am now halfway through the remaining two classes.  Yeah!

What are the things that I am thankful for this year besides being halfway through?  Here’s a synopsis of recent months:

WORK
Marco French Studio is the light of my life.  I love it there! My internship there rocks and I’m learning a ton from the master himself.  Over the last few weeks, I have been:
·      Selecting and picking up towels & robes to be monogrammed for an upcoming bedroom
·      Shopping at top notch art galleries in search of art for said bedroom
·      Searching for items to be used on the bookshelves
·      Making the bed and arranging stuff early for the upcoming reveal of the bedroom.
·      Installation of a stunning HIghland Park bedroom. It’s breath taking... The clients‘ faces say it all when they are presented with the finished product (think lots of screaming and excitement...sheer drama.  They love it btw...) 
·      Returns – Driving around for 2 hours returning all the stuff we didn’t use in the install
·      Finance & Receipts – Matching all the receipts to the billed invoice to make sure we got it correct
·      Website – Getting together a plan on how we can update the firm’s website once free time ensues
·      Shopping for more towels and a frame with a picture of the family in the new bedroom.
·      Creating a high level strategy plan
·      Looking for spectacular high-end 1940‘s articles for another upcoming bedroom.

Yes, I get paid to spend someone else’s money and do light office work.  Someone pinch me

DRAWING AND PERSPECTIVE
 Remember when I told you I couldn’t draw?  Never doubt the skills of the highly trained professors at the Art Institute of Dallas.  They have taken a once sickly artist and transformed her into a healthier artist.  Below is an example of my first 1-point perspective drawing. 


Although the drawing is not museum quality art, it does the trick.  Shading and the hardware pulls seem to be the trouble spots. For those of you who are still not sure what the drawing is -- think bedroom...

COLOR
Just when I thought my preschool days were behind me, up pops the Color class.  We have been mixing colors and painting like crazy.  The mixing and experimenting is all part of learning the capabilities of the colors to get the exact one that you need to use.  Crayola had nothin‘ on us.   We had to paint 84 colors by mixing them!  No combining colors to make a new one -- we did the whole thing from scratch baby!  You can imagine the state of the bathroom at the school during the process but we cleaned up after ourselves.  (No need to freak, mom.) Once the colors were mixed, we had to create some type of artwork to display them in an orderly fashion.   

For those die hards who have been following my blog this whole time, you will remember that I am crazy over “The Dress” from my previous post "The Dress" done by artist Todd Murphy.  Inspired by what may be easily considered my all time favorite piece, I created my own take on “The Dress” featuring all 84 colors!  I wish I had been able to spend more time on the project but it works and showcases my effort very nicely.

INTERIOR DESIGN BASICS
With three major projects due each week, this class almost killed my design aspirations and me.  It was intense.  Despite all the workload, I did learn a ton.  Nothing that was too mind-bending but certainly time consuming!

Below is my final board for my Basics class.  The best way to describe it is as a summary of all my assignments.  The class was required to draw a floorplan, pick out furniture, flooring, paint, fabrics -- the whole shabang!  Take a look at mine :

What’s always been funny to me is how simple this process looks and yet how complicated it really is to do.  Talk about long hours and tedious work...

With the class over and my final grade of an A recorded, I’m going to sleep for a few days and let my mind breathe.

NEXT QUARTER
And since its mid-semester you know what that means....time to register for next quarter!  I’ve signed up for three more classes including:  Design Basics (a 3D drawing class), Space Planning  & Programming I (where I learn how to arrange furniture) and Observation Drawing (drawing in perspective).  I’m making progress, but it’s so slow…Graduation target -- 2014.  Ugh!  That would mean that I would have to take 3 classes each quarter which is a better blend for my family and my work.

That’s the latest in the life that is Carla Moss.  Oh, except for the fact we lost the house we were going to purchase - the one I talked about last blog.  Someone bid higher and had no contingency.  I'm a bit sad.  So...off to my parents for Thanksgiving to see my family and eat with my hubbie and the kids in tow.  Maybe while I’m there, I’ll take a much needed breather also. Goodbye Frisco, hello Branson (at least for a week).

Gobble, gobble-
C


No comments:

Post a Comment