Small Farm, Small Barn...

These are a series of design drawings done over the last couple of years for a barn project in northwest Mississippi. It's for a client built, multi-purpose barn to be built in phases that has gone through a rather gradual evolution in size and program. The site is a three acre organic farm that has milking cows, egg producing chickens and a limited number of free-range pigs as its primary livestock. The visual characteristics of the site are of a natural, non-cultivated landscape with north to south gradual down slope and a 1 acre wide by 3 acre deep footprint. The barn footprint is approximately 16' x 32' feet with cow shed and screened porch wings located to the sides. The barn is designed on a modular 48" grid and is framed with nominal wood posts, joists and rafters and has a stained plywood / wood batten sheathing as its primary exterior material. All of the materials required for construction are readily available at Home Depot and are easily pre-cut. The primary roofing material is translucent fiberglass panels. All first floor spaces are non-thermally broken and, except for the screened porch / greenhouse, are livestock occupied or used for feed / material / equipment storage. The second floor is partially thermally broken and occupied by the client for parties and sleepovers on an occasional / seasonal basis.

The first four drawings show the proposed barn in its latest permutation. Simplicity in modular framing, material (all nominal wood) and detail vocabulary were the design goals. Beyond that, the drawings are mostly about color and entourage. Farm buildings are especially easy to romanticize graphically, because of their obvious iconographic and picturesque forms and the opportunity to develop colorful and thematic entourage as framing elements in a drawing. These drawings try to explore the diminutive scale of the buildings and their internally illuminated qualities at night with a "storybook barn" narrative and use of entourage as their graphic theme. They were set up in 3H pencil on yellow tracing paper as simple, one-point perspectives with a drawn to scale elevation as the foreground picture plane. The pencil base on yellow trace was then inked over as the final drawing and rendered as described below. Always make sure the masking and application of the pastel wash is the last thing done to the reverse side of this type of drawing and that the drawing is tightly stretched and taped to the drawing board when applying. Use a low tack roll of drafting tape to mask the borders and internal edges of the drawing as well. You cannot trim masking tape or frisket applied to yellow tracing paper. Apply the drafting tape in strips and lightly tack the edges. Use a hand-held hair dryer (or just blow) to remove excess pastel after applying. Even still, the cotton swab applied pastel washes shown here remain unstable throughout the life of the drawing and will smear at lightest touch.  The main purpose of the pastel wash here was to facilitate the illusion of a night sky with graduated tones of grey. So...... you can also blow off the pastels all together, save yourself some major headaches and and do softer color pencils washes to render an "atmospheric" sky in the daytime suitable to your drawing.

The translucence and delicacy of yellow tracing paper as media for a time-intensive final drawing requires careful staging, especially when using so many different types of rendering media (in this case: ink / colored pencil / marker / pastel wash) to complete. While correctable in the setup and ink line work stages, the color rendering phase of a final drawing on yellow trace can be pretty unforgiving. Marker washes always have to be applied first. They can never be applied over color pencil washes. Markers are useful in establishing base tones that are then rendered over in colored pencils. Lighter marker tones that don't bleed or leave marker lines over large areas are best for these basic washes. Marker washes can also be applied without having the drawing taped down. With all other media, having your original drawing tightly stretched and taped is recommended, especially when trying to develop softer toned pencil washes over large parts of the drawing. When scanning the image, flat-bed or desktop scan only and place a clean piece of 11 x 17 paper between the drawing and the scanner lid. This both protects your original drawing and provides a higher quality scanned image. Incidentally, the color images in this post are photographed. Scanning will provide much more color vibrancy and are more easily manipulated in Photoshop.

The last three drawings are pencil and ink studies for an earlier version of the same project that had a more ambitious program in terms of size and complexity of material and were part of a complete set of rendered presentation plans and elevations. The original drawings are done to 1/4" scale on Bristol board which loves both soft and crisp pencil work but, being non-erasable in ink, also requires patience and a new appreciation of the limited application of Liquid Paper. And acknowledging that sometimes you have to start a drawing over which, remarkably, didn't happen here. The livestock entourage in these drawings are rendered to scale as simple outlines, a quick Google Image search providing lots of dimensionally accurate images to work with. Actual drawing sizes for all images are noted. 
 


Front Yard Elevation looking South - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2012

3H pencil, Micron and "Sharpie" Ultra Fine ink pens, Prismacolor colored pencils, Chartpak AD markers and pastel on white tracing paper. Pastel and marker washes are applied to reverse side of tracing paper. Ink work and colored pencil is applied to the front side of the tracing

paper. Original image size is 11" x 17".

Rear Yard View looking North - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2012

3H pencil, Micron and "Sharpie" Ultra Fine ink pens, Prismacolor colored pencils, Chartpak AD markers and pastel on white tracing paper. Pastel and marker washes are applied to reverse side of tracing paper. Ink work and colored pencil is applied to the front side of the tracing paper. The pastel was applied by lightly shaving a pastel stick over the masked image with an X-Acto knife and blending it in with cotton slabs. Messy but effective. The original image size is 11" x 17".



Enlarged View of Rear Yard View facing North - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2012

See image below for media



Rear Yard Elevation looking North - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2012

3H pencil, Micron and "Sharpie" Ultra Fine ink pens, Prismacolor colored pencils, Chartpak AD markers and pastel on white tracing paper. Pastel and marker washes are applied to reverse side of tracing paper. Ink work and colored pencil is applied to the front side of the tracing paper. Original image size is 11" x 17".



 

North Elevation - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2010

Free hand Micron ink pens over 3H hardline base, rendered with H, 2H & HB pencil washes; "Sharpie" fine point markers on Bristol Board - 11" x 17" original image size




Transverse Building Section looking North - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2010

Free hand Micron ink pens over 3H hardline base, rendered with H, 2H & HB pencil washes; "Sharpie" fine point markers on Bristol Board - 11" x 17" original image size



South Elevation - Proposed Barn for Esther's Day Farm - Olive Branch, Mississippi - 2010

Free hand Micron ink pens over 3H hardline base, rendered with H, 2H & HB pencil washes; "Sharpie" fine point markers on Bristol Board - 11" x 17" original image size