My sketches have been partly out of necessity, to demonstrate to the contractor and architect working on my place what I'd like it to look like. We started out with a simple ramada, basically roofing over the back patio in an attempt to direct water off the roof into a channel that would carry it into the arroyo instead of into my bedroom. Then a few days ago I woke up, peeked outside and ¡Dios mio! A bricklayer was filling in the area that was meant to be left open! After considerable dickering with everyone involved, I decided to let it happen, stipulating that there'd be plenty of glass brick along the wall to let in light. So now it's evolved into another room. We've gone through a few more changes since then, and each time I've made a new drawing. Practice, practice. I haven't applied any color yet; I want to make several copies of a good ink drawing first, so I can mess up as many as I need to, coward that I am.
I've noticed a cartoon-like quality to this drawing, which should come as no surprise, since it's exactly the way I used to draw thirty years ago. I'm bothered by the crosshatching on the screen door ~ I didn't mean for it to look so higgly-piggly and the screen design is just a rough draft. That's the water heater in its own little enclosure at right. The bridge at lower left over the channel will be higher than shown and the channel deeper. If the ground looks a little slanted, that's because we're going to make a slope out of the flat area at right, to carry rainwater away from the house. And that's more glass brick under the eaves at left. You guessed it: I really like glass bricks. We've ordered some little vent windows that fit in with the glass brick for air circulation, but I will probably have to rely heavily on AC in the summer.
So here you have it, a photo of the
