Intersection
Fifth Avenue and Neville Street
I’m currently living on campus in the Fifth Neville apartments so this intersection is visible from my window. Through the majority of the day it’s pretty busy and noisy. There’s usually a lot of traffic. Tuesday afternoon, there were quite a few cop cars and motorcycles driving up and down Fifth Avenue to catch as many people as they could.
There are also a few bus stops near this intersection so there are a lot of people usually getting off the bus here. It is also busiest around noon and rush hour.
It might be difficult to see in this picture, but two separate cars were pulled over on opposite sides of the road by policemen on motorcycles. I’m not sure, but I think there must have been some kind of event going on in Pittsburgh today, because there were an unusual amount of cops.
Looking across the street you can see the small Korean grocery store called Seoul Mart. I checked it out a few times and it has a good variety of ramen.
The crosswalk here seems a little older than the ones closer to campus, because there are no buttons to cross. Taking a left and going down Neville street will take you close to the Tepper building. I sat in front of the Residence on Fifth apartments to sketch for 10 minutes and watch people walking by. There were lots of college students both from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon and quite a few bicyclists. This intersection is also near Central Catholic High School, so around 2:30 on weekdays there are around 15 buses that line up all the way to the beginning of the intersection.
This view is looking down Fifth Avenue and the building on the right of the Seoul Mart is where my dorm is for the fall semester.
Across the street from my apartment is the Residence on Fifth where my best friend from high school is living. His apartment has a balcony so I’m going to see if he can send me some different vantage points of the intersection.
This view is from my apartment. Overall, I feel it’s a pretty safe intersection, but there are a lot of cars the speed on Fifth Ave. The sidewalks seem very worn down here and parts of this intersection feel like they have been around for awhile. It’s a big intersection so crossing the street can be a little intimidating. There are two lanes of traffic going both directions and the lanes in general seem pretty wide.
After 7:00 pm the intersection is a little less busy and pretty well lit. However, there are a lot of buses that use this intersection throughout the night. There is still some honking and tires screeching, but not as much compared to earlier in the day. There is no distinctive smell about this location mainly because there are no restaurants near by. Overall, it’s a pretty nice area to live around and it’s only a 15 minute walk to campus.
This image is shot in the direction towards Pitt campus. My intersection is surrounded by apartment buildings. On the left side of the image is Fairfax apartments and right past that is the PNC bank and Craig Street. I didn’t notice this until now but above the Seoul Mart you can rent an apartment.
Hopefully this image speaks to how noisy this intersection can be.
I just like this image because I of the high contrast and depth within the picture. I feel like it really represents the intersection as a whole.
This image is looking in the direction of the Tepper School of Business. On the sidewalk you can see the newly painted construction lines/arrows. Across the street, further down Neville, part of the road is closed for construction. Usually in the evening there are quite a few people walking their dogs around this intersection.
Over the time that I have been observing this intersection I’ve seen a few changes. There seems to be more construction lines painted on the pavement. Also I found it interesting that the white line for cars to stop at seem to be a lot further back than normal. In front of the residence on fifth there is an empty flag pole and across the street they put up a detour sign. Overall, parts of this intersection seem to be out of place but it does seem to have a lot of history.
The first couple of times I tried this project, I had trouble placing the different layers together to accurately portray the perspective in the image. I narrowed it down to two images and I decided to go with the 6x8 landscape for my relief. The top image was one of my first tries and it was difficult to accurately portray the perspective so I switched my image. After restarting this project multiple times, I began to get used to using the tools and exacto knives properly. Creating a really straight edge was difficult the first couple of times. My first attempt I tried cutting out all the shapes but I found it easier to build layers to create depth.
I used my previous drawing to plan out the grayscale composition. I began by breaking it down into layers and then figuring out how many different shades I would need. The other thing I had to experiment with was how to transfer my drawing to the darker colored paper.
To test how effective it would be, I used photoshop to paint in the different shades. This helped me to better plan out the different layers and created a better sense of depth.
I did some experimenting with transferring my sketch on to the black paper. The pencil obviously didn’t show up so I used a white colored pencil to get the light outline and then went over it with white gel pen so it was easier to see when I cut out the shapes.
The grayscale composition was slightly easier than the relief because I knew what basic shapes I needed to cut out, but it was difficult to pick which shade of gray to use. I left the biker and car in white to make them stand out and in general I wanted everything in the foreground to be darker(with the exception of the road/crosswalk). It also took slightly less time than the relief because I was more comfortable using the exacto knife.
I put my grayscale into photoshop to better plan my color composition. I initially wanted to use blue in the background but I didn’t really want to emphasize the sky. Instead, I chose yellow because the stop lights in the foreground were difficult to read. Adding the yellow, added some detail and the lines helped to show the direction of the streets.
I chose to emphasize these features for a few reasons. First of all, I added the yellow to the street lines to show more depth in the composition. I also added color to the stop lights to help define the shapes. The biker and the car are a good representation of the intersection so I wanted them to stand out. There are constantly cars going through this intersection while there’s also a lot of bicycles and foot traffic. I wanted to emphasize the biker to show the type of people that pass through here during the day. Adding some additional details to the Seoul Mart building, like the awning, shows that this small grocery store seems out of place and also represents the diversity in Pittsburgh.
For the color composition I wanted to draw your attention first to the unique architecture of the Korean grocery store compared to the 70’s style apartments and then emphasize other important aspects of this intersection. Making the awing stand out with the black and white stripes draws your attention first and then your eye starts to focus on the yellow. The Seoul Mart is an older building and looks a little out of place, but it also shows the uniqueness in Pittsburgh.
Overall, I believe that this project was assigned to help us improve our design skills and to be thoughtful about composition. This project also helped me improve my patience and attention to detail. Just by spending time in the intersection I was able to better understand it and become more connected with it. Learning about the different aspects helped me to better emphasize certain areas in all three of the compositions. By reducing the elements to simple shapes, I was able to emphasize the important characteristics while still maintaining the features that make this intersection unique.
