Jim Leggitt / Drawing Shortcuts

Drawing a Maui Campus using SketchUp

 

 

I had the great fortune of having been involved with the master plan of a church campus on the island of Maui. Perfect weather, unbelievable location - stuck two days inside a conference room working our tails off. There has to be a better approach to planning projects in exotic locations.....

The visualization process in this master planning project was similar to any architectural or landscape design process. The site plan was first developed, then building 3D massing and finally whatever visual material could communicate the overall concept.  Our team constructed an unusual SketchUp model over a hand drawn plan. In order to create the illusion of an island in the distant ocean, the model had an oversized blue colored base. A curved face behind the model had a site panoramic photo applied to it for a photo realistic background.  The SketchUp tricks worked great.  I finally printed out some small scenes and traced over them to draw a couple of eye-level views.  The 20”x36” aerial perspective (above) was drawn from a view projected onto a wall. Our unusual visualization approach was very much appreciated by our client!  Here are some of the SketchUp model images and quickly generated drawings:

The actual church campus model is the small dot at the bottom of the blue face.  The distant mountain is simply a green face rotated up 90 degrees.

The site photograph was applied to a curved surface to create a photo realistic background to the SketchUp model.

Model view showing how effective the panoramic photo appears in the background,

   
 
I printed letter sized views, traced over them in red pencil and generated two quick sketches with a Pentel Sign pen on trace with Chartpak AD marker color.  Quick and very effective as a design communication technique!

If you’d like to learn more about drawing from SketchUp models, please visit Jim’s website www.drawingshortcuts.com and pick up his new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition.

Jim and Daniel Tal are offering a 3-day SketchUp + Drawing Workshop July 22-24, 2010 in Denver. Click here for details about this continuing education opportunity!

Combining Hand Drawing with Sketchup Models

 

Visualizing design concepts by combining hand drawings with 3D computer models is an excellent method of quickly communicating your idea. In the project shown below, I worked closely with the talented SketchUp modeler/author Daniel Tal and the Beijing office of  Crystal CG to develop a street scene for a project in the Middle East.  I began with an imagination sketch of the street and worked back and forth with Daniel to develop the buildings - often printing out his SketchUp views and tracing over them to adjust detail and add entourage. The final model was sent to China for the finished rendering.  This and many other similar visualization methods are outlined in Daniel’s book Google SketchUp for Site Design and my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. Here is our process:

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 Original Jim Leggitt sketch of the street scene.

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First Daniel Tal SketchUp model of the scene - originally intended as a pedestrian street without any vehicular traffic.

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Second generation SketchUp model of the scene by Daniel Tal - with a vehicular street, updated architecture, water feature and sidewalk cafe furniture.

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Jim Leggitt overlay sketch of the scene adding detailed entourage, signage, street activity and shade umbrellas.

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Final Daniel Tal SketchUp model with the lighting adjusted to cast most of the street and sidewalk in shade - an important detail when visualizing Middle East projects!  The model was exported to 3D Studio Max and sent to Crystal CG in Beijing for final production.

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The finished rendering by Crystal CG.  This was one of more than 15 renderings produced in less than four weeks for display at the Dubai Cityscape real estate convention.

Daniel Tal and I are offering a 3-day SketchUp + Drawing Workshop July 22-24, 2010 in Denver. This new hybrid visualization workshop will teach basic SketchUp modeling strategies, how to create best views and develop hand drawings from the scenes. We are looking forward to a fast-paced and fun learning process! 

Interior Drawing from a SketchUp Model

 

Visualization strategies for creating interior perspectives are identical with exterior perspectives. Drawing composition, entourage (people and furniture), lighting, camera focal length, foreground/background, story-telling, color and overall architectural design are all determined in the initial Google SketchUp model.  The process of model building-to-final hand drawing is basically three steps: 1) model construction, 2) scene export with Photoshop modifications, and 3) final hand drawing with pen, pencil and markers.  This project was of a children’s classroom for a new church.

Step One - SketchUp Model. I imported an architectural floor plan of the building and created a straightforward model showing the overall rooms in order to develop four renderings showing different areas of the facility. The children's  classroom location is shown in color.  I added wall trim detail, people, furniture, and 3D text to the classroom scene. There is no ceiling to the model, which allowed me to add sun light and shadow to the view. 

Step Two - Exporting a Scene. I chose a children's eye- level view of the room and used a 24mm camera focal length to capture the space. Once I set the view, I adjusted the locations of furniture and people to improve the composition. Lighting was carefully adjusted to cast the best shadows. My BIG mistake was not hiding the original floor plan which shows up as distracting black lines on the floor (I covered them up with colored pencil in the final drawing).

Step Three - Hand Drawing. I exported the scene and manipulated the levels and line quality in Photoshop, finally plotting the image on matte finish coated bond paper at 11"x18" - a good size to draw the additional detail into the image. All linework and extra tabletop elements were "overdrawn" with a roller ball pen and color was added with Chartpak AD markers.  Final texture and hatching was created with Prismacolor pencils. Highlights were drawn with a white Prismacolor pencil.

To learn more about creating drawings from SketchUp models and specific information about working with Chartpak AD markers and Prismacolor Pencils, look for Jim Leggitt’s book Drawing Shortcuts or visit his website www.drawingshortcuts.com.

Best of Student Drawings: Ryan Jensen

 

I have completed the semester teaching my Design Visualization Workshop at the University of Colorado at Denver College of Architecture and Planning. As with most graduate classes, there are mostly dedicated hardworking students in my course along with a couple of underachievers and one or two highly talented visualists. I selected Ryan Jensen to feature as he consistently displayed a confident drawing style, a curiosity to experiment with line and color, and a solid grasp of merging traditional drawing methods with new digital imaging such as photography and 3D modeling with Google Sketchup. Here are some of Ryan’s sketches and drawings.

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This pair of sketches were traced from photographs - one at 9 minutes and the other at 19 minutes.

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These quick sketches were from photographs Ryan took in Denver's Larimer Square.

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A sketch created from a montage of image sources to visualize an imaginary ski resort.

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A large urban design project which involved building a complex SketchUp model, establishing different views in thumbnail sketches, then creating multiple drawings showing an urban development.

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Another SketchUp visualization exercise involving the model construction, view selection and simple composite drawings from the model.

Look for Jim Leggitt’s book Drawing Shortcuts or visit his website www.drawingshortcuts.com.

Drawing Editorial Cartoons

My recent drawing workshop (that's me on the right) with graphic designers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina challenged me to research and then teach a segment on how to draw editorial cartoons. The group occasionally develops editorial cartoons and had no formal training on how to even begin drawing cartoons!  I poured over books on editorial cartoons and found a number of reoccurring themes and visual subjects that tend to repeat over and over again in cartoons - aliens, people looking at newspaper headlines, painting themselves onto a corner, commenting on something being shown on TV, standing in a long line, holding a sign on a street corner.....

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I challenged my students to select an existing cartoon, analyze its visual composition and then completely transform it into a new and original concept. The results were amazing. I selected a 2008 cartoon showing a man being run over by a car. Simple vehicular cartoon theme we’ve all seen before i.e. getting hit by a bus, crashing into a tree, driving off a cliff. I started with the basic “bones” or composition and completely modified the elements to fit into the concept of a soldier from Fort Bragg surviving my four day drawing workshop. Similar drawing framework but transformed into a new editorial cartoon.

My drawing of a Fort Bragg graphic designer (pencil in hand) being run over by a black line drawn on top of his legs by my giant hand. Small illustrations of markers, pens and Starbucks coffee cup litter the table surface. “Four days of drawing and I’m still standing” refers to the feeling of exhaustion having survived my rigorous drawing “bootcamp”. Fun stuff.

 

Original editorial cartoon by very talented Jimmy Margulies courtesy The Record (NJ).

If you are ever challenged to draw an editorial cartoon, say for your office party or a special greeting card for someone, try researching the work of others, pick a theme as a beginning point and then have some fun!

To learn more about drawing with pens and pencils, look for Jim Leggitt’s book Drawing Shortcuts or visit his website www.drawingshortcuts.com.