The Intersection of Centre Ave and S. Aiken Ave

Every intersection in any bustling city has its own character. It is defined by its 4 corners that are formed by two massive roads crossing. The buildings that are placed at each corner determine the personality of that specific area. Yet there are unifying factors that bring the entire intersection together-the sounds, smells, and sights.

First Impressions

As I wandered around the intersection, the smell of spices permeated the entire area, leading me to believe that there was an Indian restaurant located nearby. This strong, prominent smell connected the whole area together. The continuous sounds of traffic rang through the streets. Some drivers passed aggressively, struggling to figure out the confusing fork in the road that followed the intersection.

The imposing building that immediately draws everyone’s attention when approaching this intersection is a massive methodist church constructed in a gothic style, complete with stained glass windows. Beautiful flower beds, colored red, purple, and yellow, lined the sidewalk, making it an inviting place to visit.

The next building was a massive Courtyard Marriott Hotel. The building itself dulled in comparison to the church, but it was lined with classic Marriott features like red paned windows and green awnings.

The last two corners had apartments that seemed to be slowly breaking down. The bricks were discolored, and the sign for the apartments was covered in rust. A variety of people lived in each building, from nurses working at the UPMC down the street, and students walking around with backpacks. This intersection is defined by its roads, but is given its character by the people that pass, the smells that fill the area, and the sounds of traffic as people make it through their busy days.

When I gave these descriptions to my classmates, most of the drawings they created highlighted the church as the center of the intersection. There were some drawings that differed, depicting the Marriott Hotel or an Indian restaurant as the highlight of their drawing, but the focus of the majority was the church.

The First Pass

Therefore for my first pass on this project, I chose to focus solely on the church. I framed the picture in such a way that the larger aspects of the church were prominent, but in the process I ended obscuring the greater image. The prominent triangular structures were pushed to the back, making it hard to specifically recognize the church with my shapes.

With this piece, I lost the feeling of the intersection, as well as the scale of the church. For my next pass, I decided to take a step back, and place the building back into the context of the busy intersection.

The Second Composition

My intention with this piece is to show the church as a peaceful break from the rest of the intersection, by making the church really simple and the cars in front more detailed. This contrast will allow the viewer to feel the difference between the two places in the same intersection.

This perspective of the church provides a greater view of the entire intersection. It shows us the passing cars, doing a better job at capturing how busy the intersection can get and provides a view of the whole shape of the church, which helps more clearly communicate the fact that it is a church. I chose to remove the car in the front so that I could show the strong corner of the intersection to get a better sense of where the roads cross.

The Gray Scale

For my first pass at my tonal values for this shape, I decided to create a sense of depth, making the front sections dark and making the image more desaturated and light further back.

However, this pass failed to create much visual interest. My adherence to making the image more desaturated as it was pushed further back made the colors form a gradient, which wasn’t very dynamic. Also, my color choices for the cars and church made them feel very stagnant, and the viewer’s focus was not brought immediately to the church, which is where I wanted to direct my viewer’s eyes.

The Gray Scale Second Pass

For the next attempt, I decided that I wanted to add some lighting detail to the church so that it would give it more structure.

With this placement of my tones, I was able to create more visual interest. The bright white highlights on the church draws the viewer’s eyes to it, making it the main focus of my piece. In addition, using more tones on the church to show the different sides help give it more form. Changing the color of the sky changed the general feeling of the piece, making it much warmer.

Adding in Color

Then, I mocked up different color compositions for the third iteration of the piece, incorporating one element of color in place of each tone. Many of my iterations replaced the white that I used to highlight the church with a color, which did not work as well as I hoped. The bright pop of the white on the church really helped bring focus to the building, so changing this value did not create the same feeling. So I decided to choose the green color composition for my color version of the piece.

My other reasoning for this color choice was to also uphold my general value structure. I wanted to keep the colors generally the same so that the structure that was provided by my tonal values would stay the same.

Reflection

If I was to explain this project to my parents, I would tell them that we had to observe an intersection in Pittsburgh and translate it into a two dimensional space using paper. With this process we had to make important design decisions when it came to simplifying shapes and deciding which elements of the intersection were important enough to keep in the translation.

In general, this project taught me a great deal about a variety of skills. At the beginning of the project, my ability to cut straight and clean lines was greatly lacking. Over the course of the many iterations that we did, my hand became significantly steadier, allow me to achieve cleaner cuts on both the curved edges and straight edges.

Additionally, I learned about composition and the importance of simplifying shapes. The church that I was representing was more complicated than I have depicted, with many stained glass windows and arches. I chose to focus on the more important shapes of the church, like the triangle top and house-like shapes towards the bottom. This helped form a more graphic image over a highly detailed piece.

This whole process also helped me determine how to make important design decisions. Throughout the process, I had a difficult time deciding how to make the “right” choice when creating my projects, but I was able to eventually realize that there is not just one right answer. Whenever I would ask someone which of my versions they preferred, each other person would choose a different version. This somewhat frustrating process made me realize that in the end this decision is up to me. I also realized that it is important to have a valid reason for each decision that you do make. The intent behind each of your decisions should be clear so that the viewer understands what you were attempting to do.

The Final Set