To continue the Drawing to Print method, I began with a new logo on the dry erase board, simplified the marks of the marker to one stroke and no refinishing. This logo we will call a gable array.
Demonstrated below are the three finishing approaches to image processing, 1) unfiltered, 2) blurred, 3) filled solid
1) unfiltered
2) blurred only
3) filled solid
We can now examine the results and qualities of each finishing approach. While slightly noticeable in the 2D editing software, they are significantly different when given 3D depth.
The unfiltered example is jagged and spiky. This is due to irregularities in the drawing instrument, the drawing surface and the lighting. In this case the dry erase marker has some high and low points that yields spikes.
The blurred only example has less jagged edges and spikes. It captures the hand drawn character very well.
The filled solid example is the most even and has the quality of an extrusion with a flattened surface at the tops of the gable array.
In conclusion, the results from the Drawing to Print method can take into account the intended finished texture, in scales of jagged to smooth, with unfiltered as the most jagged and filled solid as the smoothest. I would recommend opting out of the unfiltered and using blur smoothing at the least. When some depth of brush stroke is optimal, use the blur filter, and when flattened surface is optimal, select and fill solid.
Examples from the incremental progress in the Drawing to Print method I have been improving since the last few posts.
Here is the beginning and the end, the sketch and the printed result, next is the process leading up to it.
For the drawing I started with a small logo sketch on dry erase. The plan is to have multiple tones yield heights.
The next step was simplifying the drawing to its basic colors, and making it more consistent. This removed unintended spikes in the 3D software.
In the 3D software, there are some rough patches and imperfections. Especially before I realized I needed to make the tones as consistent as possible. That is the main takeaway from this test, that the process is sensitive to the inconsistencies in the drawing instruments, whether they are pencil, brush, pen. It then notices, and amplifies any inconsistency, for better or worse.
To save time and materials, the prints are in one material, translucent. It is apparent, below, how the tones of the original sketch yield height in the final print.
I have been working on a process for hand drawing depth maps, that will also work for hand drawn extrusions with levels using the tonal range applied in the drawing. Ultimately, these are to be digitally prepared for 3D prints. This is a status update at, I would say, midway in development. It is also at the image editing stage midpoint of the process: marker drawings -> image editing -> 3D printing.
Results of the first experiments, I made, did not go so well, I tried graphite of all sorts, brushes and inks of all sorts, but the inconsistency of the lines and tonal fields were troublesome, as was the quality of scan and the texture of the paper was more distraction and trouble. I initially thought chisel tip markers were a good option, yet had none on hand. Until now.
Here are the first three marker test sketches, the first is a hyperbola, second nested boxes, and the third is diagonals. I used a few shades of tone, I selected the black pen, the #9, #7, #5, #3 — the levels of tone are not as apparent as I had hoped.
1) hyperbola
2) nested boxes
3) diagonals
I realized these were extruding in a way that is too grainy still and found some image processing filters to blur them in my photo editor. This took out a lot of the points or spikes. You can see them paired, the original, completely spiky models and the more smooth models, in the images and animation below. Enjoy. These were test scribbles, which leads to the big question: what to draw next?
In the United States, we have seemingly very little language governance. We have freedom of speech. We have freedom of the press. We have no official language.. We do not have official censors, we have editors for publications. Our most common language, English, is not even our own. So when we have extensive and intensive examinations of language and codes as gate keeping factors, as a restrictive force governing over professional licensure and practice, in a field such as architecture, especially where language is not the main idea or matter, it strikes me as very very weird.
Honestly, even though it is keeping me from working and earning a living in the profession, I know and trust that is temporary, and i really have nothing against the process; I can see some benefits to this system of vetting architects and their reading skills, potentially, it just seems entirely strange when contemplated or given any thought, whatsoever.
Of course, architects need to communicate verbally, with their clients and colleagues, I am not recommending inarticulate means or have any problem with language, whatsoever. My thoughts on the product of this, the muted and inarticulate architecture that is getting widely over produced, by our verbose system, however, is another story.
My takeaways from the extensive professional vetting of reading skills required to work as an architect, amount to a lesson in scale. We need to be adept at scales of reading and processing information. While our readings may be codes and guides, here is how scales work in reading of fiction. They go from the macro scale of whole genres to individual authors to finite works to chapters to paragraphs to sentences to phrases to words to letters and their interactions. We could go further in scale to fonts and serifs, or farther still into what may be beyond that.
There is a certain scale of reading that goes well in common practice, something like how 1/4” =1’ does well in drafting. We just need to recognize that it is the short paragraph region of focus and concentrate on that, as required.
We need to read very quickly at times and very carefully at others. It may be burdensome but we have to be ready to read through 2000 page computer generated manuals or specifications when required, and at other times, at a “fine print” level, line by line, and all the while we may not (as they say) “read into it”. To be able to work and survive we need to be aware of this and pay attention throughout. The dilemma is real.
Here is a quick outline of a method for turning drawings into prints. Just a few major steps, if you have any questions about intermediate minor steps (there are quite a few) do not hesitate to ask.
Step 1: prepare your drawing.
In this instance, I used some earlier prints I wanted to display with a stand. I arranged them and traced the support areas with a highlighter marker.
Step 2: digitize your drawing.
Photographs work fine or flat scanners work better for this. Bring the photo into your photo editing software.
Step 3: prepare a high contrast image of your drawing.
I did this in a free photo editor. Turned the yellow into black and the page into plain white background.
Step 3: give your drawing depth in 3D.
Use the high contrast drawing to extrude the object. I did this in a free 3D modelling software. This time, I needed a frame to structure the supports for the objects I wanted to display. Made that frame quickly while in the 3D model making software.
Step 4: print your drawing.
Export your files out of your 3D software and into your slicer and print as need be. I used a desktop printer.
Step 5. postprocessing
Assemble your finished product and add any finishes. Enjoy.
Last week, the Butterfly Pavilion at the Desert Botanical Garden opened for this years cool(er) season in Phoenix. I attended on the second day and took many photos. Since I have been on a renewed printer kick lately I processed the photos into geometry and printed them out, to finish with hand painting. I will not bore you with the process but I learned a lot about structure of color and ultra light structure of insect wing anatomy. Here are the first three:
Revisited some rather tedious drawings of libraries I made in mid april of 2024. I needed some drafting practice and love libraries so I made a couple of images. One of the things that after looking a year later, that I realized I was doing, was trying to draw every book. A fallacy you see in landscape when the artist “paints every blade of grass”. Too much time spent and as we know ‘time is of the essence’.
The first to show is, “Arch(ive) of Triumph” and is a library in the shape of a Roman triumphal arch. I know, the title and premise are iffy. Books and shelf scaffolding everywhere, space left for elevators. Kind of fun though, in a 18th Century conceptualist (Ledoux or Boulee) kind of way.
Next are more 19th-Century seeming, I guess most likely cast-iron, multistory library drawings. Pretty standard and often these are fire hazards, but charming nonetheless.
One of the designs that stands out, to me, and I still like is this next one: the Library Residence. I love sleeping in rooms full of books, I sleep soundly in such conditions. In this instance, I was trying to imagine a house where all walls are bookshelves. Here is the living room and bed room.
This is a model – prototype for 3D printing roofs and floorplate slabs, much like “Forest Beams Pavilion“. Here they are envisioned in a small pavilion that steps down into a pool.
Using printers in prefabrication is going to be a big deal. Trying to imagine what these can accomplish.
The idea is to print them on the ground then flip over and hoist into place.
You will see what I mean in the years to come. For now, enjoy the images.
Gagarin, Grigory. Alexander Column Scaffolds. 1830s (Wikimedia)
“There is a place for polishers of stones and for those who put stones together to make temples and palaces. But “experience” reminds us that a stone was once part of some stratum of the earth, and that a quarryman pried it loose and another workman blew the massive rock to smaller pieces, before it could be smooth-hewn and fitted into an ordered and regular structure.”
— John Dewey, Experience and Nature, pp.13-14.
This epigraph was clipped and saved with intent to go with another topic but after a phone call today, part of a tradition of twice, or so, a month catchup chats with a favorite former employer, it helped make sense of a recent puzzling interest. The friend and former employer had since heard a radio interview with the director of a film we watched together recently, and recommended that I listen to it. There was a certain rare vocabulary item, that he mentioned, but the audio on my car phone competes with the decibels of the full blast air conditioner this time of year. I will let you know when he replies about that.
VIEWING A FILM
A month ago, in 2025, late July, I noticed the title of a film in my peripheral, the word ‘Architecton’ caught my eye. I think it was in The Architect’s Newspaper. I instantly thought of a modernist, Kazimir Malevich who made works of the same name a century ago. Then turned to architectonics in a more timeless almost lithospheric sense. I knew it would not be a film about neither Malevich’s “Black Square” nor some kind of druidic Stonehenge or dolmen, exactly, but it got me anticipating something worth talking about. Before first watching the film, I took a quick glance at another review in The New York Times review. To avoid plot spoilers, I skimmed it only fast enough (maybe too fast) to see if it was something I would want to see, and asked the friend and former employer who also likes films like this, to see if he would join. I was drawn to this film, but I did not read the reviews enough to know what to expect. “It is a movie about stone” –that was about all I was prepared for.
If I were to have watched and either concurrently or immediately afterwards, put some words to what I saw, my account would be unique. That is often the case but it would be unusually unique, in this instance. Now I am reviewing it much later.
So in the first week of August, 2025, we went to the film at the only theater showing it for limited times and dates. From the start, I was not expecting to see destruction of so many buildings in Ukraine from Russian assaults to be highlighted . There was almost no story provided verbally, the friend I saw the film with whispered “Ukraine” but I had known and instantly recognized what I was seeing. I knew the destruction was in Ukraine but I was not certain in which cities. I have travelled in Eastern Europe and adore the people and places. In Architecton, there were no locations or dates given. This was a documentary but differed in that there were few verbal statements of “who, what, why, when, how” etc.
After the first sequences, some of the other locations were equally mysterious. The second sequence, (if I correctly recall) was a extremely uneasy landslide scene, I watched the Earth collapse and tumble, painstakingly slow for many minutes, I had no idea what was happening. I adore the Earth and Nature. What I was seeing was disturbing to see so many layers of the underground of Earth dismantled and upended. Much later I pieced it together with later images of mines, that it was a controlled landslide in mining. Some of the later sequences, were not instantly recognizable sweeping visual surveys (to a moderately travelled American) of places in the Mediterranean regions.
An enormous monolith at an archaeological site and a Roman ruin were shown, but they were not obvious locations to me. Some conversations with an architect and builders were philosophical. I studied architecture and adore it and these characters where interesting to watch and after so much non-verbal activity their conversations were a relief.
The two takeaways I can easily recall: 1) there is unjust destruction of Ukrainian lives, culture, and infrastructure in a wasteful ruinous war with no good reason, ongoing at present. 2) we might not see it this way, but we are altering of the Earth beyond recognition for all products and building materials, in this case, the overproduction of cement. Perhaps the second has a tenuous reasoning, “we need building materials” but I wonder if that is worth it.
Part of what I withdrew from the film and interview with the director’s message, is that a stone is much like us– a mountain is born, lives, and dies, and it is a whole, an ecosystem. In the film, mountains were levelled, mined, quarried, and materials were taken from these sources, extracted from nature, remade to build human civilization. They were irreparably altered, effectively destroyed in order to build civilization. And then they go wreck civilization, and bulldoze it into the hole left from mining the mountain in the first place. When they do this they destroy the Earth twice, twofold! not to mention the cultures, and peoples’ lives.
REVIEWING AFTER HEARING THE DIRECTOR’S INTERVIEW
As mentioned, the title initially evoked Malevich’s Architectons. These were constructivist basic rectilinear forms and multiplications of them. In the interviews, director would suggest, if making something of stone, make it “beautiful” so that no one would destroy it. No banal programs, no banal forms or rectangles. The selected architect in the film, even sees some of his portfolio as “horrible, rectangles in concrete”, the architect feels shameful of this bulk of their work that “is not beautiful”.
In the interview the directory discusses the Alexander Column at the center of St. Petersburg. If you know much Russian literature, this is mentioned in the poem by Pushkin “Ya Pamyatnik” a very ingenious verbal monument. Really a lot to unpack in that poem, (I included the text in Russian in a link with English commentary for language learners), might try that another time. On precedents in Russian poetry, there is also Osip Mandelshtam’s Kamen’ (or Stone in English). I did not include it in the sources, but highly recommend as it covers a lot of “beautiful” architecture that has been made of stone, because it is poetry and the film was so nonverbal. The Hermitage (also filmed in a slow and sweeping Russian Ark) and the Alexander Column, mentioned in the interview, are at the very center of St. Petersburg and are main attractions for the city, the construction of which seems a mystery to him. Another stone reference is in the very name of the city founder of this city St. Petersburg, as Peter means stone in Greek.
The director continues that urban idea for centuries is religion at the center, with streets focusing and leading to that center. He indicated a need for new centers, due to an ever more multicultural world. Architects asked knew no answer. Or had banal answers. Only one had a vision, “give it to nature”. I will admit I have thought in a design studio, ‘center the city on people and urban life, do not let cities sprawl.’ I love nature and I love cities. Will always think and rethink. So this vitally important message from the director after the hundreds of architects he spoke with, was the one that wanted “nature at the center”. This architect, selected by the director was our verbal guide in the film, very philosophical and worth listening to again.
Some last thoughts to consider, we can be distracted from seeing geology as a nature and as an organism. The stasis of stone may seem lifeless but it has a lot going on. From the interview, if we build in enduring materials, we have to find ways to build with “beauty”. As the director said in the interview, stories or readings of his films should not be the same across humanity, should we expect stories to be variable, but not beauty to be?
SOURCES
Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. Open Court Publishing Company, 1925.
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