In this episode, I create an architectural sketch for a new urban park adjacent to the Marseille OM football stadium, working in the Procreate sketching, painting and illustration app.
My Friend Clark Is Cool (Warning: this is a long post)
My friend Clark Smith is cool. Just look at his amazing watercolors below and tell me he's not. I call him my friend, which he is, but if you landed here from Mars right now, you would say "Why is he your friend? You haven't seen him in 5 years?" And I would have to say, well, true enough, but it seems like we just had lunch yesterday, and I don't think guys hold it against each other if their friendships lapse for, like, ten years at a time. They just pick it up again like everything was normal. Otherwise we'd have to gaze into the existential abyss and wrestle with some sort of deep feelings, and I like to leave deep things like that to the guy that makes the Hobbit movies.
traditional architectural rendering, digital rendering, architectural illustration and architectural sketching
Ok, let's start there. Clark likes tuna fish, just like I do. He used to eat it every day for lunch, just like I did. That way you don't have to make any decisions; you're just like, "Hi, can I have tuna on a roll with lettuce tomato and muenster cheese, please?" and the guy doesn't even say anything but just starts making it, and I think the deli guys actually secretly appreciate that. That way they don't have to think either.
The Architecture Of Desire: Peep Shows, 19th C. Watercolor Technique and Las Vegas
My job can be tedious, but it isn't always a grind (sorry). As every architectural renderer knows, drawing people is more time-consuming than drawing the exterior or interior of a building. People make or break a rendering. When drawn poorly, they tell the world that you (the artist) don't actually know what you're doing, and no amount of watercolor technique can hide that.
Problem is, drawing them well takes time: time to draw the figures in convincing positions; time to dress them; time to "light" them and paint them in a way that Winslow Homer or Sargeant would be proud of. OK, maybe not that last one, but seriously, when you paint in watercolor, your watercolor technique is who you are, and as a thoughtful person putting their work out into the world, you can't pretend you don't know the work of Homer, Sargeant, Prendergast, etc.
Sometimes that investment of time is less tedious than others. For art's sake, I humbly submit "Peep Show," an entertainment/club venue that I was asked to visualize, (populate) and bring alive for a colorful Broadway director turned Las Vegas impresario. (It's like five renderings in one, so I've included vignettes after the overall view. Also: I wish to acknowledge the important contribution of friend and colleague Chad Rush in helping me get this Sistine Chapel of Soft Porn done on time.)
Click on any image to enlarge, er, um...the image.
Here's the overall view above. Details of the people below. And yes, those are naked women crawling on top of the glass-sealed VIP lounge on stage:)
