Architecture & Urban Sketch – View from Tiger Hotel in Udaipur, India

View from the Hotel Tiger in Udaipur, India

5” x 9.5” hand-made paper sketchbook, with ink pens

I did this sketch in 2008 in India. It was my first trip to Udaipur… and all I could think of was, “Finally, meat and beer!” I was really craving burgers, and so were my friends. We craved alcohol, meat, french toast, pancakes… we were dribbling before we got there. My email to my friends and family recounting that day is pasted below:

Friday 15^th August 2008 – UDAIPUR

 So we packed up our stuff, met the driver downstairs, loaded our stuff and bounce de starter to Udaipur. I think it’s a 4 hr. drive, I kinda fell asleep on the way. But it was kinda hard to fall asleep bcs every 30 seconds is horn! Geez an ages!! Only horn..horn horn horn.. I couldn’t really sleep, but I did get a rest. On the way everybody and deh brudder was going home bcs is buses and people like crazy! See de pics, you will see people on and in de buses. So we reach Udaipur, checked in our hotels, and headed back out. We went to the rooftop of the Tiger Hotel for lunch. I had onion chicken with chapattis. Chicken never tasted so good! By the way, we outta Gujarat. Udaipur is in Rajasthan. So meat and alcohol was legal again. So I had onion chicken like I said, with some orange juice. It was delish! After eating, I took pics on the rooftop…just amazed by the place and what I was seeing, we proceeded down to Lake Pichola and the Lak Palace Hotel.

Udaipur is known for its art, jewelery and craft. Lots of leather, leather sketch books, shoes, sandals, silver jewelery, saris, etc. On the way to Lake Palace we would meet people, I met a little boy (can’t remember his name now) and he walked with me all the way and was telling me about Udaipur, etc. He was 9 yrs old. He is in the pics too. Across from City Palace by Lake Palace I was dumbfounded..I couldn’t believe this was India, it felt European! We took pics and walked, passed the cows who were just chilling on the bridge, etc. After that we went to a temple at the junction, then went home to freshen up and reconvene for dinner. On the way home we saw monkeys (mommies/ daddies and babies). You will see in pics. We went to Savage Garden for dinner. By the way, before I forget, the ice creams in India are some of the best. They are creamy and rich. I think it’s because of the milk they use. For dinner I had bruschetta for starters and some kinda thing for dinner. They were both good. I had vanilla ice cream for desert…mmmmm finger licking, spoon licking good. After we went home, I watched some Bollywood on tv until I fell asleep.

View from Tiger Hotel across Lake Pichola to Lake Pichola Hotel

Read a little history about Udaipur below:

Udaipur is in the state of Rajasthan, latitude: 27.42°N, longitude: 75.33°E, covering over 37 sq. km and 577 m above sea level. It is on the banks of the River Ayad, in a valley surrounded by the Aravalli hills, near Lake Pichola. A series of canals connect several artificial lakes in Udaipur leading to it being called ‘the Venice of the East’. The lakes surround imperial palaces, built in the seventeenth century of marble and sandstone, and lend the status of heritage city to Udaipur – with a legacy of 500 years of architecture, culture and natural beauty. The capital of Mewar State, Udaipur, takes its name from Maharana Udai Singh, who founded the city in 1568 after retreating from the third attack on the city of Chittaur by the armies of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It is likely that the strategic advantages of the surrounding terrain influenced his decision.

Sustainable Development and Systems Thinking: a Case Study of a Heritage City by Pramod Paliwal

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Architecture Sketch – National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port of Spain, Trinidad

National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Trinidad & Tobago

5” x 8.25” ink pens, in Moleskine sketchbook

This is a sketch of the National Academy of the Performing Arts in Port of Spain, Trinidad with the National Museum in the background (to the left).  I believe the concept behind the design was taken from the country’s national flower, the Chaconia.

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.”

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Cartoon – Suzie the bird

How unfortunate that Suzie suffered from Eisotrophobia AND Ornithophobia

Have a great Saturday!

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Visual Recipe – Sangria!!!

Visual Recipe - Sangria

Today’s Visual Recipe is Sangria, courtesy http://laurenzietsman.wordpress.com/. The look of this alone makes me feel refreshed. It has been pretty darn hot these days and I would like to try it this weekend. I have added a few more fruits (pineapple and, apple). I have also added a few dashes of Angostura Bitters because I KNOW it makes the delicious even more delicious.

I can imagine myself at the beach, under a tree, reclining in a soft, cloud-like chair, shades on, hearing the waves lap onto the shore with my pitcher of sangria next to me. Sip sip… ahhhh… I had to leave this post to get something to drink. Yeesh! Thanks for such a lovely visual Lauren! I encourage you to try it, and have a great weekend.

Link to recipe >>>

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!

Follow me on Twitter!

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Architecture Sketch – Sagrada Familia (Negative) in Barcelona, Spain

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain

Above is the negative of my sketch of the Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain. Part of my journal entry for that day on the 22nd May 2005 says:

We arrived at 7:10am in Barcelona. GM got pick-pocketed. JG hurriedly woke John and I up (for fear that Chase would leave us) and we were up and out in a sec. Going to the Sagrada Familia by Gaudi. Dove coves where they collect the droppings of doves and use as fertilizers. The first pics are the east end/ the apse end. Gaudi building still under construction. Nice pond across the street in front of it. For Gaudi God was in gravity. Revenue from tourists are a huge part of money for completion, esp. the Japanese. It is Art Nouveau in the craft tradition. Artists are outside on the pavements selling their artwork. They are old artists. The fruits on top of the pinnacles represent seasonal fruits. The grapes represent the blood of Jesus. East sunrise and the Navity represent birth of Christ, on the west, the death of Christ. Splayed corner by Certa. Cars parked in middle of street like the median w/ one side for bicycles an the other, one-way traffic. Axis to connect Sagrada Familia and the Hospital de Pau by Montana on Avinguda de Gaudi. Almost all the city’s corners are chamfered. Apts face the ‘rotunda’ that is created by the chamfered corners. They employ people to keep the streets and the city clean. It is cheaper to keep people employed than maintain them in prisons. In the prisons you cannot vote.

From my Eurotrip 2005 journal

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today”

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Architecture Sketch – Shore Temple: Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu (Chennai), India

Shore Temple at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu (Chennai), India

This is a sketch of the Shore Temple (Mamallapuram) in Tamil Nadu (previously called Chennai), south India. Standing in front of the temple is a woman with her orange sari dancing in the  ocean breeze. I went to Tamil Nadu (Chennai) in October 2008 to spend Divali with my friend, Harish. He is originally from Chennai and was going home from DC for vacation. I left Ahmedabad, along with my housemates who were also originally from there and were heading home. I was bound with bright-eyes and bushy tail to Chennai. Harish and his family (hello Appa) were the perfect hosts for my entire stay. His dad who I affectionately also called “appa” made sure I was always well fed. He always had a snack of some sort for me. One of the many places Harish took me was Mamallapuram. It was beautiful…the beach was too! As one of the Group of Monuments at Mamallapuram, the Shore Temple has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thanks Harish & Appa!

Here is a bit more about the Shore Temple and Mamallapuram below:

The Shore Temple, is erected on the beach not far from the great relief of the Descent of the Ganges. The temple was planned in such a way that the door of the sanctuary opened to the east, in order to catch the first rays of the rising sun. This in itself resulted in a rather peculiar arrangement, since it necessitated the placing of the maṅḍapa and the temple court at the rear or west end of the main sanctuary. The terraced spires crowning both shrine and porch very clearly reveal a development from the form of the Dharmarāja rath. In the Shore Temple, however, the dependence on the vihāra type is less marked, owing to the new emphasis on the height and slenderness of the tower, like an attenuated version of the Dharmarāja rath. Actually, the characteristic Dravidian form of a terraced structure with the shape of the terminal stūpika echoed in lesser replicas on the successive terraces still prevails, but these recessions are so ordered as to stress the verticality of the structure as a whole. Such hallmarks of the Pallava style as the pilasters with the rampant lions persist in the decoration of the façade of this structural monument.

Shore Temple - Tamil Nadu, India

From the Māmalla Period there date the remarkable rock-cut temples of Māmallapuram or ‘Seven Pagodas’ on the sea-coast below Madras. The work here was under the patronage of the king, Narasiḿha. The principal architectural monuments consisted of five temples or raths that are really free-standing sculptural replicas of contemporary structural buildings carved from the granolitic outcrops on the shore. These monuments are of the greatest importance for the later development of Dravidian architecture because they reveal the dependence of the later Hindu style on pre-existing types of Buddhist architecture. Especially revealing for this latter aspect of the style is the Dharmarāja rath. It has a square ground storey with open verandahs, which forms the base of the terraced pyramidal śikhara above. It has been rightly suggested that this typical Dravidian form is an adaptation of a Buddhist vihāra, in which successive storeys were added for the accommodation of the monks. The terminal member of the structure is a bulbous stūpika, which is repeated in smaller scale on each of the lower levels of the terraced superstructure. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this and the other raths at Māmallapuram lies in the open verandahs on the ground-storey. The pillars are of a distinctive Pallava type with the shafts of the columns supported by the bodies of seated lions.

Reference: The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain by Benjamin Rowland

Smile…

This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.