The classic life of the Architect is one in which he teaches for 1/2 a day and spends the remaining hours on his own practice. This I have done for 28 years in 3 Architecture Schools. From September 1970 and Rio Hondo Jr. College, Cal. Poly, Pomona to December, 1999, Los Angeles City College, I have taught this class Arch. 4, Graphics, at least once each semester. Twice per year for 28 years I have gone to the big blackboard and drawn the following illustrations to my lectures. This means I have drawn all these images about 56 times. Since here are 78 images in each portfolio, it means I have gone to the board 4,368 times with white and colored chalk. And began to speak… hr. lecture and 2 hours on the board and its replication by the students in the drafting studio.

Yet, I don't remember taking a single picture of my work. What you see here are the students' versions of what they heard and what they copied from the board.

Over the years, I saved about 5 copies of each of the output of my classes. My favorite has always been Arc 4, where I could teach these young men and women, how to see - in architectural terms.

I thought I would like to include these archival drawings as a part of my website. This methodology will be seen by some as passé and obsolete in the time of computer-aided-drafting but to me they as vital as teaching the snow plow downhill before clicking onto parallel a la Tony Sailor. It is the hand drawn image, which allows us to graduate to CAD. Drawing is the ability to see.

Searching, I could only find 3 remaining student copies. From these I have culled the most reflective of the lectures. It is with great regret that I have not found the works of other students from other years; for, their absence has affected some loss to these pages. To all whose work is not shown, I offer my regrets.

Apologies are also offered for any mistakes of solution to the Shades and Shadow portion of these drawings. Your correction to their errors would be greatly appreciated.

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All Images and Content Copyright © David Ming-Li Lowe 1999 - up to present