Saturday, February 26, 2011

Playhouse on the cheap

I really want to get started on building the playhouse before I loose my motivation.  But I have to get taxes out of the way, and it's still kind of rainy season weather where I live.  So until I can get started, here is another quick and dirty sketch.  In the interest of saving money, I am thinking of making a smaller playhouse to avoid having to pay more than $100 for a building permit.  If my structure is less than 96" tall, then I don't need a permit, but that would mean the door(s) would have to be pretty short for grown ups, probably about 65" tall.  I'll probably bite the bullet, pay the permit fee, and build a structure to fit a normal size door on the back.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Playhouse Concept Sketch à la Sharpie (for Thursday 2/17/11)

Our main computer crashed around an hour after I posted Wednesday's sketch, so I don't have access to Sketchbook Pro right now and I just set up our laptop to work with the scanner last night.  It will be a while before I can further develop the Victorias's Secret sketch.

Didn't have much time to sketch on Thursday or Friday, so I resorted to a new genre:  the Sharpie sketch!  This is another design I have for the playhouse, which I sketched with a Sharpie.  Yes, it's slim on details and in a sense it's a lazy way to do a sketch for the day.  But I think it's also a good exercise, because every sketch stroke counts.  Every stroke must be deliberate and executed pretty much correctly, unlike pencil or pen where you can erase or sketch lightly and darken later.  So it's a good sketching challenge.

As for this playhouse design, the noteworthy detail is that I moved the kid's door to the south side of the playhouse instead of the west side.  I think this will work better with the layout of our backyard, so the playhouse entrance will look out to the open space of the backyard instead of the back of our house.