152 - Art of Scale Figures

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Hey, Jamie, how's it going?

Jamie: 0:35

How are you doing?

Kurt Neiswender: 0:37

A little curve ball for those watching. This is fine. Everything's fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I feel like I should turn it off because somebody created that and you know, you don't want to, I don't want to talk to it. And for

Jamie: 0:54

now, welcome to episode 152.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:57

152. The actually, you know, the, the guy who created that, this is fine. Meme. Cartoon. Well, it's not a meme. It's a cartoon. He's a cartoonist. I do. I did forget his name. He was interviewed at NPR though. It was kind of cool. His, his story and creating that. I should have prepared my notes on that one. So I don't know the guy's name, but we'll come back to that.

Jamie: 1:22

Do you know his story?

Kurt Neiswender: 1:24

Well, not, not entirely anymore because why even have half preparation? Jamie? So this is one 52. So anyway, moving along quickly.

Jamie: 1:34

Yeah. So, so folks, just in fairness, so one 52, we probably had the longest green room ever for the episode, this episode. So Jamie. Normally we use the green room as like prep kind of warm up, you know, it's fun. We take questions from folks when they pop in and ask us something or tell us randomly where they're from all that's good stuff, but it was super long. And we just went down a whole lot of fun rabbit holes. So. Honestly, I think we might be a little tired.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:06

We definitely exhausted a lot of interesting, we're going to be publishing green room material as a short little snips, if you missed it. You really shouldn't have is my point, but we've made it to one 52 note to self. Don't bang on the desk because, Oh, you know what? That reminds me of maybe I should issue a subtle public apology for Jamie pointed out. There are a couple of sound glitches. In one 49 and seven, or just the two, three, all three. And some of them are due to either Kurt banging on the desk, you know, in this motion or something in the, the electronics. So anyway, I apologize because. You know, we, we, we try our best to have clean audio. Is

Jamie: 3:09

this thing on? Can you hear me now?

Kurt Neiswender: 3:12

It's your turn. It's your turn. So we've got to issue the public apology at the beginning, right? No, no, no. Errors and remissions, all that fun stuff.

Jamie: 3:21

Yeah, no, it was good.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:22

Yeah. What are you, what are you drinking in your, in your coffee?

Jamie: 3:26

I went with this. Oh, so I, I did. Try the rootless care package. It's fantastic. I've not had the Dr. Congo yet. That, I'm gonna save that for the next episode. I'm gonna queue it all up. But in the, in the interim today, it's I've gone with a medium roast with chicory in it from Community Coffee. So yeah. Nice.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:55

Got that, got that little itch for chicory every now and then, huh? I do.

Jamie: 4:00

I do. I do.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:01

Yeah.

Jamie: 4:02

I don't know.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:03

I'm gonna have to obtain some. I haven't had any in quite a while, so I'll have to go seek it out. What about yourself? I did. I am actually for today. I have I grabbed a quick bag at Starbucks, the other company of some Guatemalan Antigua roast. And so, so, you know, it's just a temporary stop gap. Sorry, Sean. It was recently, we already talked about that last week, right? It was, it's his birthday. Yeah. Yeah. But

Jamie: 4:41

tomorrow day, it's almost, it's almost you and your twin's birthday.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:48

That's right. Two people tomorrow, but I was going to say tomorrow, maybe I'll get it. Maybe I could twist Penny's cafe to give me a birthday coffee. Oh yeah, totally. No, actually there is a, one of the baristas at Penny's. That serves rootless has the same birthday

Jamie: 5:08

as I, I wonder this, this sounds like a, this sounds like a video in the making. Like I think there, I think there could be a rootless Penny's coffee sketch podcast like collab.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:22

I like it. That's a happy birthday. Celebrate my birthday. Thank you. The worst things to do. All the things.

Jamie: 5:30

So, so, so just letting all the folks in Flint know is that all the restaurants that give you extra crap for your birthday, like, like IHOP, Denny's Kurt, you might see Kurt

Kurt Neiswender: 5:43

Yeah. You know Kurt Kurt's a, he's just leaning in.

Jamie: 5:47

Yeah. Just lean into it, buddy. I'm a big fan of the

Kurt Neiswender: 5:49

birthday.

Jamie: 5:51

Yeah, go for the birthday perk.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:53

$5 off of this.$5 off of that. Yeah. You know, free coffee, hopefully.

Jamie: 5:58

Pancakes, pancakes, maple syrup.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:01

The any who, so yeah, so that's, that's what's in the, in the cup. That's what's, that's what's going down tomorrow. So you know, we've kind of. Exhausted all of our green pop culture banter. I know. I feel like we should just go straight to talking about the sketch.

Jamie: 6:18

Well, we can, but let's, for this audience and for the episode, the true episode please do the fashion runway sequence that you maybe, you know, piloted in the, in the green room for us.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:30

Instead of. Walking forwards on a runway. I guess I will have to go backwards.

Jamie: 6:35

There you go. There you go.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:37

Till the teacher is in full, full camera. So this is our AIA store acquisition show. The eight presidents, the eight women presidents that we've had at AIA National.

Jamie: 6:51

Well, seven and one president elect.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:53

Oh yeah, I suppose if you want to be technical, yes. We are currently in Kimberly Dowdell's. It's hard when the thing is wrong. Error.

Jamie: 7:01

Error. The word you're looking for is error.

Kurt Neiswender: 7:05

And then next year, 2025, we moved to Evelyn Lee.

Jamie: 7:10

And, and we have discussed folks that if you are attending the AI conference, that was a 24 conference, how, how are we branded this, these new fangled terms?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:21

There's a company called a 24. I know. A film company. So I think they aren't calling it. Yeah. I think, I think they've already kind of moved away from it. Yes. I haven't seen eight, but we'll

Jamie: 7:34

see. Anyway. Yeah, we'll see. So we're going folks and we'll be there. Come find us. We'll be the guys wearing those shirts at least one day. We'll have some coffee sketch podcast shirts. Yeah. And, and hopefully be able to, to, you know, to meet a lot of those presidents and whom we know. But maybe we'll. Maybe we'll record a little shout out from each one of them and they can tell us if they had a walkout song during their presidency, what it would be, and if they are the president elect, Evelyn, you're on notice, so you need to come up with what that song is going to be.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:13

Give you the heads up. Yeah, because we're going to ask. Well, they all got the heads up, but you know. Yeah, that's going to be the prompt, but yes.

Jamie: 8:20

You

none: 8:20

know,

Kurt Neiswender: 8:20

you might be able to catch it. Remind them to listen to. Episode 152, then they can, they got a couple of months to think about it. Yes. I'm sure they already know it, you know, but yeah, all, all good, good good fun and it's all, it's all facts to, you know, kind of have a walkout song. The yeah, I've got that's, that's going to be the what's going to be the recap. We'll have to circle back in a couple of months with the the live. The live Q& A with all the presidents on this t shirt.

Jamie: 8:54

Yes Okay, so question for you. Can we get one of those little tiny little microphones? Can we do that? Can we acquire one of those have you just be like I I I do like those. I mean yeah, can you can you hold this and

Kurt Neiswender: 9:09

Yeah, you know Well, it's be easier to pack than this thing that I keep packing which I wonder if all the travel You Is what's causing some technical, you know, it's been very reliable though, you know, so I, I, what do you call it? I have have the, uh, I can't give up on The old, reliable piece of equipment. I can't toss it aside. I did try last season.

Jamie: 9:40

Are you a hoarder?

Kurt Neiswender: 9:42

No, not, no, no. I'm, I'm all about like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm pointing very gently at. Our friend, the microphone, because I hope you're not broke. So let's see that

Jamie: 9:59

sketch.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:01

Yeah. Cause it coincides with a recent, a recent global event, right? The the eclipse, the eclipse happened on Tuesday or no Monday. As time flies. So Monday I was on campus and I got to enjoy it. And I posted a picture you know, with, with one of my students and many students, but I sat directly next to one student and kind of watched the whole, whole thing so, so, so Jamie's sketch inspired a little bit about the. So we'll talk about it, you know, very shortly. However, here in Michigan, I use the hand, we were not quite in the path of totality as they, use that phrase. So, but we got like 98%, 99 percent of the eclipse. And then if you went just a little South to Toledo into Ohio, you could pick up the totality, which a lot of my students and some faculty that I know, and when lots of friends and neighbors drove down to Ohio, cause it's only about an hour to, to get to the totality zone. Yeah. That way. So anyway, we've got quite, quite a good show. Because you know, the last time around in what, 2017, I think I only got, it was a very minor percentage. I don't know what the percentage was. So it was, it was interesting, but not as dramatic as the net, but down in Texas, you probably had a good percentage. Didn't you? Totality. Did you? Yes. Through Austin. Oh, cool. I knew the path was basically streaking all the way to Michigan or Ohio, I should say, but

Jamie: 11:52

so folks who are joining us for the first time on the podcast Kurt is in Flint, Michigan and teaches at Lawrence tech and so he was on campus in Michigan. He can show you his map while I'm talking about where those locations are on the hand, because Michiganders use their hands as maps. Fun fact. you guys can call it whatever you'd like. Texas, everybody knows the shape of Texas even if they're not from here or live here cause Texas is after all Texas. But yeah, so I'm in Austin and for all that blabbering yes, we were in the path of totality. We're having fun, you know, watching totality kind of stream across the U S starting in Mexico, equal pass up through. Sort of danced right by San Antonio and then hit Austin pretty dead on. And then up through central Texas, Dallas had probably of Texas probably had the best show of the major cities. And then and then up into the rest of the States and eventually Michigan, you know, we saw the map before on Kurt's hand. But yeah totality here. We, where I am in the city, I think Austin probably had about a minute of totality and we probably got about 45 seconds cause I'm sort of Southeast ish where I was but there were parts of Dallas that had like four minutes of totality and sort of the surrounding communities, which is pretty, you know, it sounded amazing, you know, in terms of the people that I spoke with so I think if you're going to do it. You know, definitely go to a city that has, you know, you know, upwards of, you know, 3 or 4 minutes of totality to really kind of fully experience all the aspects of it. Yeah, I think the temperature drop was really pretty remarkable. The day to night thing was pretty remarkable in Austin. We did have a fair amount of cloud cover, so it did part. You know, as luck would have it enough that, you know, totality was visible. You know, even on a cloudy day, but yeah, it was, I'm glad I got to see it.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:04

The people that went to Ohio got, I think, four minutes or pretty close. So I didn't re you know, it's funny with 99 percent here in Michigan, there's still enough light that you can't see. You know, stare at it without the glasses when you hit totality. That's the part that's kind of freaky is that you can actually look without burning your eyes out, which that that I understand now, after going through the whole thing, why people, sought to go down to Ohio. I mean, that's not going to turn into Ohio state joke, but. But anyway, it's, it's, it's a short enough drive that it, it would probably be worth the thing, but I had, I had things to do. I had people to teach, you know, I did allow everybody to go take a break and soak it in for a half an hour. You weren't that guy, right? Which, which one's that guy? Oh, okay. That keeps, Keeps the students, you're like oh no, no. I was like, come on. Alright. Because I was doing desk scripts, you know, so I was like, okay. All right. It's three, it's, it's almost three. Like we're going outside You're like,

Jamie: 15:20

no, I've got some architecture to talk about here. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 15:24

but yeah, no, we got it. moving on to the sketch, which Jamie did. Allude to in the green room, as we were preparing that this is a hundred percent from the noodle and, and, you know, as any artists would use a reference image or, common commonality is having a reference image, right? Sometimes the, the, the pure creativity with no reference image, which is what Jamie has here. Right. So that's the, we were talking about straight from the noodle

Jamie: 16:01

yeah, no, I, I think it's, it would, it, you know, as I was telling Kurt, you know sometimes you have creative blocks, sometimes you're working through a variety of creative processes, you know, in varying ways, both of us,, have day jobs and, and are artists, architects, you know, in a variety of different ways. But yeah, so sometimes you have to, and we've talked about this on the podcast before is sometimes you have to find ways to challenge yourself. And so in this particular case, having seen that event you know, a little earlier in the day I sort of sat down afterwards and. I was like, I want to sketch something and when I sort of challenged myself to and, and the first thought that I had with well, I had two thoughts and this will one will allude to the green room. So if you get the, the brilliant opportunity to catch some of those clips that we're going to snip snip from that, we talk a whole hell of a lot about soundtracks of the late nineties, early two thousands. That influence our brains yeah, total ancient history stuff. Some killer movie soundtracks. I won't say any more. Kurt might be, Kurt might be dialing in one of those here. The Memphis podcast goes dark for the evening because he was not aware of it. And when I gave him that track list, he was like, Oh but black hole sun sound garden, fantastic song. And so that was like, as I'm watching this, like, that's the song that's in my head. And that's what I'm thinking about. And, and then along those same lines, when I sat down to sketch, I was like, you know, there's that great line when Obi Wan sees the Death Star for the first time and is just like, that's no moon. And, and and so kind of combining all those things together in Jamie's brain, you know, produced a sketch like this.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:58

Did your face melt with the black hole sun? Yeah. Totality? Like in the music video. Yeah. Remember, remember those things? Music videos.

Jamie: 18:07

Music videos. What's that?

Kurt Neiswender: 18:10

But that's cool. The the I like this sketch a lot. It has a lot of heavy, heavy rendered texture. And this dramatic one point perspective of this sort of dense urban condition and, and the, So I think I got you to watch, you know, trying to fold in more TV and interesting sci fi. There's a series called Dark on Netflix and the sun condition here or the orb in the sky in your sketch reminds me of the way they rendered, That sort of anti matter thing, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone else, in dark, which, is kind of a fun story. Well, I don't say fun. It wasn't like a fairytale, but it was, I think it was a really nice, is nicely made. Sci fi story.

Jamie: 19:04

Remember folks that Kurt has already revealed to the audience that he does like the true crime. So that is the undercurrent or the floor as we speak of, of, of how he, you know, refers to shows, you know,

none: 19:22

you know,

Jamie: 19:22

moving forward, but yeah, one point perspective I think the thing that, you know, I've seen a fair amount. In the last few months, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but as the algorithm, like, blasts your own feed with a bunch of weirdness some images that sort of stick in my brain are these very dense urban environments where, where photographers or people gather to see sunsets and sunrises and moonrises kind of emits, you know, This sort of dense urban Ness, you know, sort of that vantage point of the long streetscape and the buildings vanishing away from you. And then you have this amazing celestial body kind of juxtaposed against it. And you're like, you know, you're caught in, it's the all moment. And, and I think that, you know, a lot of us experienced the all moment on Monday, you know, in watching the eclipse or, you know, whether in totality or not. Yeah. And so for me, it was, you know, how do you draw that? You know, what, what does that look like? And, you know, can I render something that gets people to think in that kind of vein, you know, and sort of think that way or feel that way? And, and Kurt sort of zoomed up on it here, in, as, as we're looking at it together. And one of the things that I found from a drawing challenge point of view was setting the perspective and working through the textures of detail and sort of setting that up so that your eye is moving in the direction that you want all that. Fairly straightforward. The thing that I found myself at the end of the sketch and this zoomed up image sort of, you know, captures it was there's a texture to the sky that in this case, only could be picked up with a stippling technique. And I think that that was the thing that I really wanted to add to the image because otherwise that white space kind of around that, that orb really wouldn't have done it justice as an image. And so that was something that I can't remember the last time that I've done it, but the impulse here was to do that. And I, and I think it really, completed it for me.

Kurt Neiswender: 21:47

Yeah, that's why I zoomed in on the, on the stipple which is sort of a series of light dots from the pen for those that are not aware. I was actually going to say, I don't remember. You don't do it very often. And so when it comes out I think it's a nice contrast to how heavy and not in the negative, the heaviness of it, but the, the sort of the, the, the bold, like the darkness of this urban scape, contrasting against the, the sort of the lightness of what a stipple, the density of your dots you know, sort of scatters and, and what makes it a lot of, I think it adds a lot of texture. A different kind of texture. Two, well, two things really to one's a question to you, one, and then the first before I get to the question is the the sketch prompt this morning to my students, because we've continued the tradition of Wednesday morning sketches. Was we're nearing the end of the semester. So I said, you know, sketch a idea of the presentations you've had all semester, something that stood out to you. And then I said, or you can also draw a sketch. Of the eclipse from Monday, and then I teased them, but it better not just be a circle a circle on the page. Actually, I have a, you know what? I, there's 1 in particular, which I thought it'd be if I quickly, if you allow, if you allow me, I will oh, gosh, it's, it's going to it's here. It is because it's. It's quite easy to not, not too hard to miss. So here, Oh no, it's bending, but yeah, just as heavy as Jamie's sketch, you know, there's a lot of dark, a lot of dark pen. It didn't bleed through the papers very, very carefully then. I don't know if you could read the the little cartoon. There's a character, you know, two characters, one, one's got their solar protective lenses on and one does not. And I will,

Jamie: 23:59

First of all, I love the, I love the, the sketch share, but I will say, and this isn't, this is going to sound judgy and this is like, and I, and I apologize. but I have to do it. I have to go there. I can't say that I've seen an architecture sketch where somebody does a stick figure. I think it works, like, in the context of what they sketched. But I, I can say that I haven't seen one like that in a long, long time. And so I will say, I, that, that was totally judgy. I apologize and Kurt's like, I have nothing to say to you right now. Jamie, as you say that for me sharing this sketch I have to be careful. I know you totally. To be careful, so, no, no. So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna take it, I'm gonna take the hit on it. So, all I would say is that for someone who came up with that concept and, and rendered what they rendered in terms of that drawing, there is absolutely no reason for them to limit themselves to only doing a, a stick figure. I think that there. And the thing for someone like myself who studies architects, studies artists, takes influences from everywhere, is there is a million ways to draw a human form, you know, even in a sketch way, there's a million ways to do it. And some people end up getting so stylistic with it that that human form that's probably like a, like a two second. A two second scribble, you know, for a person becomes emblematic of all of the ways that someone can look at their artwork and say, yep, that's so and so I, I could, you could pin five of them up on the wall and I could pick out and say, Jan did that one. You know, Chris did this one suit that one, because of those types of elements. And so for that person who sketched clearly a great sketch of everything else, don't limit yourself, you know, figure out what that figure out what that form is. To this day will experiment with those forms in my sketches, And, and, and come up with different versions of it. And I will admit. I will do a sketch like the one you're seeing on the screen, spend a hell of a lot of time on it and then go, you know, I didn't put any scale figures in it and then and then I will attempt in some cases. I didn't in this one. Actually, I did. It's kind of blurred at the bottom of the page and you can't, you probably can find them. Maybe, maybe not. I kind of blurred it. So yeah, they're right there. I'll draw them. And sometimes I draw them and go, that's crap. Like, like Jamie, you could do better than that. And, but the thing is, is that even in those moments where you're just trying to render just something for scale is give it a little forethought, you know, give yourself that grace to, to say, you know, that's important. You know, that's also important to what I'm doing and, but at the same time experiment with it. It doesn't have to be, you know, like, if you look at the work of like someone like Juan Moreau you know, versus Corbusier or Dali, you know, or, you know, I mean, Diego Rivera did some, you know, some really interesting sketches in preparation for some of his murals. So all of those, the human figure takes on kind of a, a really almost abstracted way. But it's for them,, it's sketching something that I know is to scale. In, in very, very few lines so that I can put it in varying spots in my sketch to help the overall drawing. And so, yeah, admittedly, what we were looking at before was more of like a. You know, political cartoon or kind of a statement about, the event.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:59

So all with the grain of salt soap box. Hell yeah. So let's see, but the, that's a good point. Cause it reminds me, well, actually, there's another, you know, I do sketch things, I just don't put them on the, On the Instagram as well as Jamie does, but I, and that, that's, I don't need to make the excuses, but I actually was experimenting with different,, scale figure sketch forms, side by side, just drawing, drawing the one I normally do and then trying to Continue the abstraction of like, you know, what are the elements, right? Usually the head, you know, is, is the thin, the thin portion, you know, at the top. And then you have the shoulders. And then how do you address the feet or the, the, the legs, if it's movement or static. And I was testing out these, these sort of forms. And, and it reminds me too, as you were saying, like the, the, the hand of it, where like you can identify. Person's hand through the, how they choose to render the scale figure. And when I, when, when I was a student and we learned a little bit about, you know, say modular man and, and those scale figure representations and how to sort of be inventive about it. We all. My whole cohort, started sketching and developing our own version of what they are. And then up on the, you know, just pin up things on the,, unsolicited. It's not like you were presenting, but you just kind of slap them on the, on the wall, the trace, put the trace on the wall and kind of share these things. And yeah, I remember that, and. And people generated a sort of signature about the scale figure. And I think, it's an interesting aspect. I don't know if we've really ever dug into that very much in any of the episodes we've talked about. I mean, we hint, we talk about the use of scale figure, but the idea of there's a signature.

Jamie: 30:11

There's also sort of like an unwritten rule that most people who rent, who render at, any level of prolific pace will also hide things inside their renderings. So that's where, yeah, that's where the Easter eggs live, or that's where like the program goes from a PG 13 to an R rating. But yeah I think, I think the thing that is evident is that, anybody who is interested in drawing it, it really can become very personal and experimental. And, and there isn't necessarily always a right answer to things, but I think that using the scale figure in your drawings. Even in a drawing where you weren't necessarily expecting to is if you remember, if you go back to the episode before this one you know, one of the things that Kurt was sort of struggling with, with the sketch that we had on the screen was the scale of it and trying to, kind of understand that Stanford Taurus. Like how big is this darn thing that Jamie's drawing. And one of the things that's absent in that sketch is a scale figure. It's, there's not a reference point, for these types of things. And so it is, it's, it's something that the illustrator or artist or architect has control over, and it's also a way to bring the viewer, who is responding to your drawing into your world. So if it's a stylized version. And a scale figure could be as simple as a circle as a head and a triangle as a body, it, it can be a variety of different things. But if it's, if it's at the right scale in relationship to everything else that you're drawing, suddenly everybody understands, without you saying a word. And, and I think that that's really what we're talking about is, you know, with these sketches, It's a form of communication. It's a form of telling a story whether it's short, long, or,, with, or without a soundtrack. So that

Kurt Neiswender: 32:13

could be the future prompt for a Wednesday sketching is, develop, I don't know, 10 or 20 scale figure concepts.

Jamie: 32:24

Are you allowed in your prompts to your class to play the judgment night soundtrack

Kurt Neiswender: 32:30

No, but I should start. I had thought about doing a a dance party for extra credit. Have you, there's these, this is a total side, side for anybody's listening. They might get the sneak preview, but there's this too, this, this toy that you could buy. I call it a toy. I don't know. It's like a button, like the easy button. From staples, but there's, it's called the 32nd dance party button. And it, it just, every time you hit it, it plays a different 30 seconds of electronic dance music. And I was like, well, maybe, if, if people want, some extra credit, I'm like, okay, 32nd dance party. But

Jamie: 33:12

how does Charlie feel about that?

Kurt Neiswender: 33:14

I should, we should,, yes. Cold Fashion should have his own 32nd dance party button that we can generate. Well,

Jamie: 33:22

happy birthday to Cold Fashion, happy birthday to my co host, collaborator, co conspirator in all things CoffeeSketch. Thanks for a fun one.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:36

Another, another trip around the sun to tie it all together.