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Colored Pencil Techniques
Colored Pencil Techniques from Artist Daily: Create Faster, Richer Effects in Your Colored Pencil Drawings
As a medium, colored pencils are rapidly growing to a higher level of appreciation in the art world today.Artist Daily has compiled free tips and techniques for achieving fresh and innovative effects using colored pencils in this free eBook. Many artists over the years have come to find out that color pencils are a very non-forgiving medium. However, following this free tutorial, you may find how fulfilling and uplifting working with color pencils to be.
Colored pencil art is on the rise. Many artists want the lushness of color and the precision of a drawing implement, and the ability to mix the two with their painting practices as well. Using colored pencils is a way to have all of this. In our new free eBook, Colored Pencil Techniques: Create Faster, Richer Effects in Your Colored Pencil Drawings, artist Janie Gildow gives a colored pencil tutorial based on her own artistic practices that show just how adaptable colored pencils can be. Get your free copy today!
A Blend of Color Temperature
A full cloud cover brings together the color of the sun (white, 5200k) and that of the blue sky (about 8000k to 10,000k), merging them into a color temperature that is slightly higher than the sunlight alone. The amount of blending depends on the cloud cover, but a general rule of thumb is 6000k.
Mediating Mediums - The Digital 3d
Harvard GSD student Greg Tran, whose thesis explored “architecture’s ability to mediate spatial and perceptual experience.” His exploration into techniques that engage and allow for an immersive experience for architects to design with presents an interesting proposal for the future of our profession. The technology, in its current state is largely unexploited and employed as a standalone object, rather than a holistic experience and progressive tool. See his video and proposal for an enlightening take on how we can use this technology for the advancement of architecture. Greg Tran is the recent Thesis Prize Winner – Harvard Graduate School of Design 2011.
Interior Renderings and Illustrations
Chairs, tables, sofas, and other pieces usually figure so prominently that perfection in the rest of the rendering is negated if the furniture is not up to standard.
Illustrations may depict complete rooms, or they may be vignettes of home furnishings or products set against suggested backgrounds.
Interior decorators, designers, and architects use these renderings as presentation drawings and for submission to their clients. Some are reproduced in brochures.
Department and furniture stores, or their advertising agencies, include interior renderings in ads that merchandize houshold necessities.
If you have any question please, contact me, and I'll reply as soon as possible.
Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera
Stephen Wiltshire has been called the "Human Camera." In this short excerpt from the film Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory
V-Ray Architectural Demo Reel 2012
These demo reels were created with the special support of numerous 3D professionals whose avant-garde imaginations and endless passion for innovation are setting trends in the CG industry. Special thanks to all! All copyright and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Will The Real White Light Please Stand Up?
Have you ever bought something—say, a shirt—that seemed to be one color in the store but looked totally different once you got it outside? If so, then you, my friend, have been a victim of lousy color rendering: artificial lighting that doesn't accurately represent the "true" color of objects.
In the lighting industry, color rendering is measured as an index from 1—really, almost impossibly, bad—to a perfect 100. Perfection, in this case, is when a light source is functionally equivalent to daylight.
Like sunlight, old-school incandescent lightbulbs are full-spectrum, which means they put out—and can therefore render—every color in the rainbow. Other lights, such as el cheapo fluorescent lights and mercury vapor streetlights, may glow with only three or four colors. With color rendering index scores in the dreary 70s or less, these sources don't show things with their true colors.
WHEN IS YELLOW YELLOWER THAN YELLOW?
Put a white piece of paper over the left side of the disk and stare at the X for 30 seconds.
After 30 seconds, take away the piece of paper but keep staring at the X.
WHAT'S GOING ON?
Wow—the left side looks much yellower than the right side. The difference in perceived saturation comes from a phenomenon called adaptation. After staring at the same color for a while, the color-sensitive cone cells in your eyes stop responding as strongly as they did at first. This reduced response becomes obvious when you compare it to a "fresh" view of the same color.
Actually, there's nothing special about yellow here. It works with red, blue, green, or any other color—even puce.
What It Feels Like To Be A Freelancer
A Startup Offers Freelancers Tips On Not Getting Screwed Over
DOCRACY, AN EFFORT TO EDUCATE CONTRACT WORKERS, SPRANG FROM THE FOUNDERS’ OWN FRUSTRATIONS WITH THE TECH WORLD.
My Thought on Working from Someone's Revit Model
You can hardly be an architectural illustrator, working in the industry today, without having to work with a Revit Architectural model. This is how I feel about the workflow...
In the mid 80's, I started creating architectural renderings for a living. By getting paid for my work, I guess you can say; I was a professional illustrator.
My architectural renderings were invariably done with black pen, on cold press paper. I spent a lot of time working through perspective, light, and shadow. Not until I got everything worked out on paper, with a blue pencil, did I commence drawing.
Preparing a perspective architectural rendering is a science... If anything is off perspective, your rendering will look wrong. It's amazing and has been a personal interest of the mind, how people perceive things. Our minds eye expects to see something, and if that something isn't what it expected to see, red flags are raised. If a person, in your architectural rendering is off scale, it will ruin your viewers experience. So, I can comfortably say, preparing a drawing was 1/2 the work.
Unless an architectural rendering you were working on is a personal project, your time is a premium, and time is money. When I got my first PC, I discovered a shortcut. With my PC, I was able to mass out primitives, work out perspective, and study light and shadow. What took many hours, on paper with pen, would only take minutes with the PC. Now, with the perspective worked out, I could spend more time on the creative part of my architectural renderings.
Fast forward couple decades, to the present time, and I see the same thing happening. Once the PC could handle more than primitives, I started rendering 100% digitally. I put down the pen and paper, picked up the mouse, and everything is now digital. So, instead of spending a lot of time working out perspective on paper, I found myself spending a lot if time trying to model from 2D architectural drawings. To get a good render digitally, you have to build a clean model. The process from 2D wasn't pretty. It served a purpose; I found all the construction errors on the drawing but at my expense. I was commissioned to illustrate, not to do a construct-ability study.
Over the past several years, I have been asked to take over a lot of Revit Architectural models. Although these models are not modeled nearly clean enough for a high quality render, I wasn't stuck with drawings that didn't work. Although I end up remodeling most of the models I get, there is still savings. Everything has been worked out, so I can spend a lot less time modeling through all the issues, and I can spend more time on the creative part, which is why I do what I do.
“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of a man go together.”
John Ruskin Masquerade
Stephen Wiltshire
Stephen Wiltshire has created several famous panoramas of iconic cities all around the world.
The Stephen Wiltshire Gallery Ltd. is a family run business.
Profits from sales are donated towards childrens' charities, organisations with activities related to art education and The Stephen Wiltshire Trust Fund where Stephen funds his ongoing studies from.
The Stephen Wiltshire Gallery is also involved in various retail and technology based ventures such as Tabtill.com, the ultimate tablet based cash register with optional epos printer and cash draw ideal for retail and hospitality trade,Totallikes.com, a social media trend analytics tool and Expression Jewellery, a Victorian style jewellery range designed by Annette Wiltshire.
“The success of an illustration depends on how intimately it tells a specific story or suits intent, instead of how it was produced.”
Bobby W. Parker Jr.
Architectural Illustrator Lives in a World of Deadlines
It is reasonable to view your finished artwork with an overcritical eye. Only the most complacent craftsmen see no room for improvement.
Nevertheless, an architectural illustrator lives in a world of deadlines and realistic financial returns on his work. Unless he feels the delineation is completely unsatisfactory, he cannot take the time to render it again. Also, another observer is more likely to overlook insignificant flaws than the artist who produced them.
Empire State of Pen
Timelapse video of artist Patrick Vale drawing the view of the Manhattan skyline from the Empire State Building.
Music - Moanin' by Charles Mingus
Proportions
When you have a structure, that isn't characteristic, it's essential to add something that gives your rendering scale. People are one of the advisable things to bring to your composition. Not only do people add liveliness, they contribute scale. Be mindful! You can be slightly off with your scale, and you will through your viewer off.
A acceptable architectural figure is six feet tall, give or take a sensible variance for sex, age, or ethnic differences. The average body is proportioned to a height of eight head lengths. Legs are four head lengths, shoulder width is two lengths, and hip width one and half head lengths.
Children's heads are slightly larger in proportion to their bodies.
From proper proportions, the figure can be laid out as a series of simplified shapes. I apply my people in post-production so; I use boxes in my scene, to symbolize these proportions.
How to Be Creative – eBook
How to Be Creative – eBook
PsyBlog's new ebook, How to Be Creative, explains six key principles of the psychology of innovation to help you be more creative.
If we can all be creative, why is it so hard to come up with truly original ideas?
It's because creativity is mysterious. Just ask any scientist, artist, writer or other highly creative person to explain how they come up with brilliant ideas and, if they're honest, they don't really know.
But over the decades psychologists have given ordinary participants countless tests, forms and tasks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. From these emerge the psychological conditions of creativity.
Not what you should do, but how you should be.
Six scientific principles of creativity
In the scientific literature six principles of creativity recur again and again:
- Knowledge - explores the dangers of expertise.
- Problem construction - how creative problems should be approached.
- Emotion - explains which types of emotions are most creative.
- Combining concepts - why the raw materials are already out there.
- Abstraction - how to see your creative problem more clearly.
- The wandering mind - reveals how to think flexibly.
Each are explained with examples from the research and are directly applicable to everyday creativity.
Architectural Vignettes
Architectural Vignettes show only a detail or a portion of a structure rather than en entire subject. Unfinished edges and free forms of composition are distinctive features.
They are used widely in advertising to stress a particular selling point of a building, and editorial stories to emphasize important features of design function.
In architectural offices, vignettes illustrate key areas of a structure. During preliminary planning stages, they can indicate a direction of design without the necessity of delineating the entire subject.
Architectural Vignettes
The 11th Hour Phone Call
There is no denying that our industry has changed. But, do you know what I don't miss? I don't miss the 11th hour phone call, from clients with that urgent project, that they needed tomorrow. The reason I don't have to deal with that is, most of them are no longer in business.
Presently, I have top shelf clients, who treasure quality workmanship. The quantity of work isn't there, but the high caliber projects are. The only way someone can think it takes hours to produce something stunning is, if they don't value what you do, anyway.
YOU CAN'T CUT CORNERS, specially with your visual deliveries. The best intent will be lost, if you don't have good graphical representation.
The testimonies I get, from returning clients, go like this:
Bobby, I got my last two clients partially because of the work you did for me on previous projects. But, both were upset because, when it came to their project, the quality just wasn't there.
So, the moral of this story is, only the good survive. The people who have dispensable income are the ones who value quality and craftsmen ship.