We have been focusing a lot on comparing and contrasting, we took a look at the difference between Khufu's, great pyramid at Giza, a pyramid built for a man, and Hatshepsut's temple of Karnak, a temple made for a women. Both were constructed in a giant scale, however one is a tomb and one is a temple. The tomb has no main entrance, while the temple has a giant entrance with a staircase ramp leading you to the entrance. Both of them show a sense of Unity, the pyramids because there are three large ones, and three small ones that are all the same shape. The temple has pillars that line the border, the even spacing between them give a sense of unity to the buildings exterior.
After going over Egypt, we moved on to Greek architecture. Greece was within traveling distance to ancient egypt which explains why there was a lot of influence from Egyptian architecture in Greece. Like the Egyptian mastaba "the private houses of the Greeks generally were small and unelaborated." (roth 226) The scale of the private housing to the more important public housing had a massive difference. "The largest Greek public buildings were open to the air and included theaters and stadia for athletic events." (roth 227). The most important building in Greece was the Parthenon. This was a temple that only the Deity's were aloud, common people were not aloud to worship in it. This is one of many examples of the hierarchical scale in Greece at that time, another example would be the fact that only rich citizen males were aloud to vote in their democracy. One way to compare and contrast Greek and Egyptian culture was "Egypt's greatest architectural remnants are buildings dedicated to funerary practices" (roth 188), and Greeks most important buildings were dedicated to worship. This is a similarities in that the only reason why the funerary purposes in Egypt were so important was their strong belief in the after life, and their belief in their Gods.
The architecture in Greece has a lot of qualities that many prehistoric sites have. The columns placed in the early megaron were along the outside of the building in straight lines spaced apart to be visually appealing, much like stone henge and Carnac. The columns are to re enforce the boundaries to the megaron, much like the stones at Carnac and stone henge were placed to represent the boundaries of the site.
In the construction of the large scale buildings such as theaters and stadia they did not have as tight of boundaries as the smaller buildings. "It was fortunate that the generally benign Greek climate made it possible to build theaters in the open for there was no predictable way to cover a building seating fourteen thousand people." (roth 229)
The Greeks had a main focus on making everything perfect, or ideal. They strived for perfection in the construction of all their buildings. "The aspects that have made the Parthenon so special from the time of its creation include the extraordinary precision of its construction and the subtleties and refinements used in its design."(Roth 237)"Each component block or column drum, each piece of narrative sculpture, was crafted to perfection in the best available materials(roth 242) when constructing the Parthenon. The Parthenon was also built in a large scale to make it stand out and look more impressive, "It measures roughly 101.5 by 228 feet and the order rises 45 feet to the top of the cornice." (roth 236)
We have been doing a lot of vignettes in class, and out of class. we had to go out to public places and draw people and the things that surround them. I found it very difficult to make the people look realistic, so my people are some what stylized. This reminds me of the stylized people from the paintings of Egypt, because they were not realistic, but they are shared the same style. 
When we did our vignettes were talked about really trying to get the proportions right, one of the exercises that we had to do was draw 50 scale figures. This was difficult for me because i could not get the hands or faces to look right even after i saw the examples from the website. 
Another thing that i found to be really hard was trying to draw someone sitting down in front of you. i could not get it to look realistic at all. 
After talking about furniture in History, and how the stool was the most important piece of furniture in the Greek culture, we had to design and draw a stool, or chair of some sort. We had to do many different drawings including a section.
photo found at http://www.thetravelpeach.com/europe-vacations/greece/parthenon-acropolis.jpg
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