Research Task: Architecture Illustration

For this research task, I had to look into a variety of different architecture illustrators and look into their process and their different approaches into creating an architectural illustrations. I looked up several artists all ranging in different mediums and specialties to get an understanding of how broad it is to work in this industry, and at the end of this I'll reflect on my thoughts of this task.

William Hunt

The first illustrators I came across was William Hunt, whose captivating watercolour illustrations captured my attention; his work is light and has incredible detail with beautiful pigmentation of colour that helps create realism in his work. His work would elect him "Associate of the Old Water-colour Society in 1824" from here he would move to still life. 1

William Hunt shows the architect with nature, keeping the same colour scheme through out and allows the detail of the buildings to show and stand out; natural tones exude off the page with beautiful lighting capturing lightness. Washes of colour smooth across the page with tints of colour peeking through the pink roofs.

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Paweł Floryn

An architect illustrator from Poland who specializes in creating bird's eye view of their works and create narrative visualizations throughout their architectural pieces. Their work is very varied in it's outcome, some are bird's eye view while others are 3-point perspective-- some illustrations are colourful with a powerful punch colour-scheme, and some are simply black and white. Floryn is very broad with what they use to create their pieces of work, they use traditional mediums as well as exploring 2D animation, exterior and interior.

There is a lot of focus on line-making to show dimensions and form of a building; it's all so detail and precise. In the very colourful illustrations you can see spots of colour to suggest something (i.e. flower, brick), the buildings doesn't hide away in it's surrounding landscapes but stands with it.

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Don Coe

This artist caught my eye, a very familiar artist that I saw was Don Coe; their iconic work has been seen around the world and is one of the most well-known illustrators. Don Coe's specialties are both exterior and interior; their style is very chaotic and expressive, done so with their explosive line-making and blotches of colour.

Don Coe achieves this by using watercolour, marker, ink pens, pencil, graphite and pastels; their work is stylistic and eye-catching with the inks, lots of contrasts with the ink and the washers of colour creates their illustrations. The ink is sharp and flowing, while creating intricate details that are both expressive and prominent; whereas the colour create the flow and helps adds to the structure of the piece. The landscape isn't shown much with the building, our attention should be on the buildings and just that, in some instances their are times where landscape is involved but is only suggested with round marks and blobs of colour-- less detail.

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Alan Whittle

I came across this artist when I was researching the last artist and I was fascinated with their work, their works ranged from concept art to detailed drawings and I found that their primary work is in exterior work using watercolour, marker and ink.

Whittle's work is very intricate and resembles that of Leonardo Da Vinci's invention drawings; however in this instance it's architectural design and repairs. Mark-making makes this illustrator stand out, every single line is thought out and planned, and it's as "chaotic" as Don Coe's work. Alan Whittle's works in focused on the small parts of the architecture, again, in some instances their may be landscapes but it still remains as detailed as these close-ups.

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Bob Marshall

A different medium is what makes this artist stand out from the list, a 3D artist Bob Marshall creates immersive architectural art that has been seen at places such as the English Heritage to the University of Aberdeen; his work has allowed for history to come to life, recreate national heritage sights in 3D with people to add narrative.

Marshall's work is realistic and intricate, lots of texture and realism goes into his work, and he specializes in creating 3D exterior, interior and animation pieces; he creates these 3D pieces using the program Blender, recreating historical landmarks and scenes. 5 The works are always as detailed as it's subject and is created in a narrative aspect, as if it was a movie, but as how history was/could have been. It's environment enriches the landscapes, it creates the grounding we need to believe that this is what it could have been like.

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Archigram (Architecture Telegram)

Exploring Archigram's website, I found out that Archigram was centered around the "good parts of architecture" and aimed to show bizarre and wonderful concepts of architecture. The designs were created by teams of people with some people using collage to create their work and others using ink, pen and coloured markers. 7

However, out of the many artist I came across in this organisation, one stood out as soon as I saw the design and that was the 'Capsule Homes', by Warren Chalk (1964). The drawings were made using black ink and tracing paper and was cut up to complete the illustration-- the printers then printed it in colour for the newspapers.

The design is eye-catching with it's line-work and complicated structure and even more bold with it's colour, with the use of technical drawings in 3-point perspective and top-down perspective you get a really in-depth idea to what this 'capsule homes' would look and feel like living in.

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Reflection

This research task allowed me to delve deeper into architectural illustration and I found myself surprised as I researched these artists, I didn't expect this type of illustration to be so diverse in mediums and styles; I was expecting simple blueprints, or that of Don Coe's style work. Seeing works like Alan Whittle, Warren Chalk and William Hunt's, I found myself re-evaluating what it Architecture illustration is.

Eventually I found myself so over-whelmed with the amount of different styles and techniques that people used that I really had to reduce down the amount of people to research, otherwise I could have gone on forever. My favourite would have to be William Hunt's work, it's detailed but soft and I love traditional work; although, I love 'Capsule Homes' design a lot, it's really ahead of it's time and is something I could see being built in the next 20 years-- that's probably very ambitious but it would be cool to see it.

I'm really looking forward to the next exercise!

1 U/A, The Met 'Fishermen's cottages at Hastings', U/A. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/420453 Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

2 U/A, SAI 'Paweł Floryn', U/A. https://www.sai.org.uk/illustrator/pawelfloryn/. Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

3 U/A, SAI 'Don Coe', U/A. https://www.sai.org.uk/illustrator/doncoe/ Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

4 U/A, SAI 'Alan Whittle', U/A. https://www.sai.org.uk/illustrator/alanwhittle/ Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

5 B Marshall, Bob Marshall 'About the Artist', U/A. https://bobmarshall.co.uk/about.html Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

6 U/A, SAI 'Bob Marshall', U/A. https://www.sai.org.uk/illustrator/bobmarshall/ Accesed Feb 27, 2024.

7 U/A, Archigram 'The Story of Archigram' U/A. https://www.archigram.net/story.html Accessed Feb 27, 2024.

8 U/A, Archigram 'Portfolio (image 4)', U/A. https://www.archigram.net/portfolio.html Accessed Feb 27, 2024.