Countdown...

Sorry blog, life is a little busy.

We have just two weeks until the final crit. and presentation at  Hadlow. We are told by last  year's students that this is the BIG DAY - we are marked but then have one month to improve everything.

Yesterday we were given the 'To Do' list. Just the 20 A1 sheets to present to the firing squad 
on 7 May.
Oh yea.
I feel a little rhyme coming on...
So much to do and not very long,
Will we make it, I rather wonder...
without making a terrible blunder.

OK, I think that's enough of that.

Here's an update on what I've been doing lately:
Rendering the 1:50 design plan (just one third approx. for comments). Here it is.

I have annotated but not shown here. Comments yesterday were sort of OK. Julia said it's too fussy. When I continue the rendering I will attempt to blend some of the planting on the bank together rather than showing all the textures. Jamie said to lose the 'billard ball' effect on the Buxus balls. Actually I've just noticed this was the slightly older plan, there is now another hard surface at the top of the stramp, and a Magnolia - it will connect to the Main Avenue.  As Julia said, we don't want our park users to trample their muddy feet all over the lovely clean lines of my steps. There are also people in the later plan.

Here are two sequentials - didn't manage the other six. These show spring and late summer looking north from the bottom of the perennial 'meadow' bank.

Feeling somewhat behind schedule. I've done one section but not the other two for 1-50 scale.

I have just finished the planting plan. Here it is (it took me about 22 hours, OMG):

I have added a schedule and the title block, plus some grey shading to make some of the grasses a bit easier to identify. I will also need to do the specification... if only I could remember what is meant to go on it.

Tomorrow I will be earning a little crust, then on Thursday I'll have a go at the Design Plan again. I tried using InDesign for the annotation but got a bit scared at using something unfamiliar at this late stage. 

This is my current process: AutoCAD; into Photoshop for colouring/rendering; into Publisher for annotation. This planting plan was all done in AutoCAD but I've added some greys in Photoshop now. Publisher really doesn't cope well with the large files but it's a familiar old friend.

Just the 15 sheets to go now then.

Toodle pip.