Exercise: Architectural Illustration

Brief

For this exercise create an architectural illustration that shows the contrast between a building, or structure, of your choice and its surroundings.

This contrast may be the relationship between an old building and its more modern neighbour, its location, or perhaps the contrast is more embedded in its alterations and renovations. 

Alternatively, you can choose a structure such as a bridge or pylon to work from and explore the contrast with its surroundings. 

Pick somewhere that’s easy to access and draw. Use your sketchbooks to capture as much information as you can. When you get home either pick your best ‘live’ drawing, or use your notes, photographs and sketches to create something more finished.

Think about how you deal with this contrast creatively in consideration of  the materials used for the structure you are observing, and the textures and surfaces. These might be reflected in your choice of drawing materials, approach to image- and mark-making and your use of colour and composition.

You may find that you didn’t capture as much detail as you needed on your first visit, so you may want to return to get more information. Find out when your building or structure was built and do some research into the architectural style of the building you have chosen.

Plan

Ideally, I want to improve drawing and perspective drawing, therefore I must draw in public and observe from my own eye. The materials I will be using is watercolours, I feel like they're the most versatile and quick-handed materials; I will take some white acrylic to help fix mistakes.

James Gurney

An artist that I've researched before, but just need a little refresher is James Gurney, an amazing watercolour artist that creates artwork on location of his subjects. He suggests the following tips (which I've broken down into my own words).

1. A simple light sketch will be all you need to start off.

2. Keep the colours simple and with the colour theory in mind.

3. Brush stokes can help create detail in different ways for different things such as tree leaves.

4. Square brushes are important in create solid shapes and structures.

5. Transparency is your friend, it allows you to add more colours and tones while keeping the first initial colour underneath-- and depending on your under-painting it can help keep the painting light.

6. White gouache is great for when you make mistakes or when you need to add highlights.

Execution and explanation (trial and error)

I started off this exercise by immediately painting like James Gurney (the best I could) of a house near me that has a field opposite, it somewhat balance of building and nature and so I tried painting from life.

As I was painting I started thinking if this was what the exercise intended and as I finished I tried to come up with another way to push myself, and so I took the opportunity to go to the shopping center 'Bluewater' and draw the beautiful interior that was (I think) made of marble, and watching the world go by.

I was thinking again, "was this what the exercise wanted me to do?", and "I don't feel like I have enough work". So as I was leaving I got to the parking lot and looked around, spotting a beautiful, modern building surrounded by trees and bushes above the chalk cliffs and decided to do an observational drawing-- trying really hard to capture the dimension of the building and the nature.

I think I captured contrast in the last observational drawing of modern building and the natural environment, but I prefer the outcome of the interior drawing. For this exercise though, I am choosing to develop the last sketch further because of it's contrast to it's environment; I am going to implement James Gurney's techniques into the final illustration to help me capture the essence of the building.

Illustration

For the final illustration that was developed from the last sketch I did, I used watercolours and used the photo to help think about what colours to use with the sketch to guide me.

Evaluation

For this exercise, I had to explore architecture and nature with my own observational drawings, notes and photos with the help of my previous research task.

I had a lot of fun with this exercise, I initially thought that I had to purely draw and paint from life so I did my neighbors house from outside my window, however I felt like I wasn't really pushing myself and developed it further when I went out to Bluewater and drew inside. As said before, I still wasn't satisfied so I decided to do an observational drawing of a building that I found on the cliff edge of Bluewater, when I got home I developed that last sketch with help from a photo I had to create the illustration.

I really enjoyed using watercolour and I feel like the little research that I did before hand got me warmed up, and I started to feel more confident drawing from life, especially with the inside observational drawing because there was quite a lot of people walking around and I was drawing out in the open.

The illustration turned out okay, I'm not super happy about it since I feel like the proportions are off with the building and I wasn't able to capture the cliff with watercolour without losing focus on the building-- so I got rid of the detail. It's good that I really tried because I feel more confident about drawing landscapes and perspective (slightly), and it's a good warm-up to whatever is in store for the next assignment.

This has really encouraged me to draw from life more...

1 J Gurney, YouTube 'Watercolour Painting on Main Street', Nov 17, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5RZJuAfoxk Accessed Feb 27, 2024.