Urban Sketches

Every first friday of each month there is an art walk in Portland's Congress Street "arts district" and this is a quick sketch I did of one of the events...
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That's hot, Patrick. The whole composition calls to mind the artistic sensibilities of Mid-Century advertising designers. A lot of energy there.
 
Beton Brut said:
That's hot, Patrick. The whole composition calls to mind the artistic sensibilities of Mid-Century advertising designers. A lot of energy there.
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It instantly reminded me of a Filene's ad.
 
I'm going to pile on and say this is awesome. It's amazing to watch your work evolve over time. It's show how much effort you are putting into it.
 
Thanks everyone...this is just a sketch I did in an hour, but really I appreciate all the feedback and positive comments! I did this free hand, but usually I spend a lot more time ensuring architect like precision with rulers etc....speaking of which I should show my new boston skyline, based on a skyline shot statler showed me years ago (if he remembers) but it is too big to scan so I'll need to take a picture of it.
 
A quick hand sketch of what I think would look nice here. This took about an hour.
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Wonderful though hopefully the sidewalk will be improved with a better material than asphalt(?) if anything comes along here.
 
The asphalt is layer one of a brick sidewalk being installed currently. The plan is to turn this construction site into surface parking and then a parking garage with some residential on top when the economy creates the market...as you can see the large structured parking facility in the background, this idea has generated some opposition. The sketch, although it looks slight out of scaled (the levels are not the height they would be if this was really a building) was to show how much better the street would look with a building rather than parking (which could always be put in the interior).
 
I think telephone poles are the bane of an urban sidewalks.
 
kennedy said:
I think telephone poles are the bane of an urban sidewalks.
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Yeah, that pole is just such a nuisance despite the great streetwall sketched out. They certainly don't belong in most dense settings.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Yeah, that pole is just such a nuisance despite the great streetwall sketched out. They certainly don't belong in most dense settings.
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If it helps, this site is currently a construction zone where a large meat factory on the fringe of downtown was torn down (hence the lack of great sidewalks (no one walked to the meat factory) and the city zoning code requires all new development in this area to replace frontage sidewalks with new antique looking urban lights. So, if this portion of the site ever gets developed (the front portion just had a hotel built on it), there will be new street lights installed. This is just the asphalt prior to bricking in the property. See new hotel:

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This is a quick sketch depicting potential future redevelopment along an arterial road in Portland, ME
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