Jim Leggitt / Drawing Shortcuts

Creating Daytime and Nighttime Drawings

I recently organized a drawing workshop in which students began with a simple “overlay and trace” method of drawing and experimented with representing a proposed arts center building both as a daytime scene and as an evening scene. The basic drawing process was similar in both instances but changed with the approach to coloring the scene with markers. Here is a step-by-step explanation of the process:

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Overlay and Trace From Photography

Step 1: Compose Your Photograph. I took this eye-level photograph of the subject building with a wide angle lens, composing the image to show the main space and include both of the buildings on either side of the property.

Step 2: Red Pencil Mockup. I printed the photograph onto 11”x17” paper, taped a piece of trace over the black and white print and sketched new architecture, signage, people and landscaping using a red pencil.

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Daytime Coloring with Markers

Step 3: Overlay Inkline Drawing with Marker. With this daytime representation of the scene, I taped a new sheet of tracing paper over the red pencil mockup and produced the illustration using a Pentel Sign pen. I added color marker using light blue (Chartpak AD Sky Blue) for the sky and dark gray shadows beneath the landscaping and people. Although this quickly rendered perspective adequately portrayed the scene, it was missing the drama and emotion that I accomplished with the nighttime version (below).

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Nighttime Coloring with Markers

Step 4: First Experiment with Lighting. My first attempt at representing the scene at night was a good beginning but still lacked some of the emotion and drama of lighting. I colored the sky (Chartpak AD Blueberry) and buildings with much darker markers and added bright yellow and orange marker color to the signage and interior space of the art gallery. I also added a yellow tint to the side of the gallery building to represent reflected light from the outdoor terrace.

Step 5: Second Experiment with Lighting. I redrew the ink line drawing again and added more lighting effects to the perspective. Compare this version with the one above and notice the dramatic differences in how much yellow marker was used in the scene. I created the illusion of spot lights beneath the trees by applying yellow colors beneath the foliage. I also added yellow marker beneath each interior spot light to emphasize the illuminated interior space. I colored most of the sidewalk with a dark gray marker but added yellow color to the pavement in front of the building to represent light spilling out of the building and onto the walkway. Dark gray marker color beneath the people emphasized the bright light behind them.

Next time you are producing a drawing, don’t hesitate to consider whether to illustrate the scene at night rather than in daylight as the dramatic effects of lighting can make a great improvement to the character of your scene. Good luck!

 

Look for other interesting articles on my blog, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and read my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. 

 

 

 

NEW! - The 2010 Blog Collection , a 116-page catalog of my best blog posts from 2010 is now available on Blurb!  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1963744

Sketching at Colorado's Roxborough State Park

I am fortunate to live close to a National Natural Landmark park with dramatic red-rock formations, distinct western plant communities and a host of wildlife. This 4000 acre park has spectacular views of several Colorado rock formations, including the Fountain Formation, Lyons Formation and the Dakota Hogback. Its quite easy to record the beauty of Roxborough State Park with a digital camera but much more rewarding with a sketchbook.

I recently took a group of students to Roxborough sketching deer and different scenes throughout the park. I visited the park this past weekend with my wife Janice and had the pleasure of observing a wild bobcat! Enjoy these photos and sketches from two trips to a wonderful treasure so close to home!

Sketching Mule Deer. My students came upon a small herd of mule deer resting among the scrub oak trees and we did a series of very quick pencil studies of the deer. 

Fountain Valley Overlook. Our group stopped at a rock outcropping overlook and sketched the valley floor from above. We drew in 6”x14” sketch books which reinforced the horizontal character of the scene.

 

View Variety. Roxborough Park in the fall season has muted colors of browns and grays contrasted against the orange and red geologic formations that constantly change in the sunlight.

Sketching the Persse Place. The early homestead of Henry Persse was built in 1903 and has been fully restored and used as an interpretive center for the park. Our group sat on the hillside and sketched the scene before continuing on our trail walk.

Transition from Plains to Mountains. The red sandstone spires and colorful hogbacks create dynamic views in all directions of the Fountain Valley. The rock formations are carpeted with grasslands and patchy montane shrublands with scrub oak and mountain mahogany.

Digital Photographs. Janice and I walked through the park and took many photographs of the dramatic rock formations, scrub oaks, mountain mahogany and matted grasslands. 

Observing a Wild Bobcat. With very few park visitors to scare away the wildlife, Janice and I came upon an adult bobcat searching for food in an open meadow. We watched the cat for over five minutes before it wandered down the trail. Park rangers later explained that there is a pair of bobcats living at Roxborough Park. What a thrill to see!

Look for other interesting articles on my blog, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and read my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. 

 

 

 

NEW! - The 2010 Blog Collection , a 116-page catalog of my best blog posts from 2010 is now available on Blurb!  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1963744

Thanksgiving Watercolors: Our latest collection!

Annual family traditions are not easy to establish and maintain over an extended length of time. My daughter Gretchen and I have a 16-year old ritual of painting a watercolor every Thanksgiving day. We created our first turkey watercolor in 1995 when she was 11 years old and that began our annual process of creative story-telling, illustration and pure teamwork painting watercolors depicting a marvelous story about turkeys in our modern world. This year marks our 16th watercolor and we are ever so excited to begin!  I wrote about our watercolors in last year's blog showing many of the other paintings we created.

A brief overview of our turkey saga: Turkeys on route to the slaughter house escape. Turkeys tour the world. Turkeys experience trauma, love, family, travel, culture, politics and heart break.  The story is much more complex and will someday make a great book!  Our process is simple - we dream up a concept that may pertain to current world events or our personal lives, sketch out the big idea, illustrate the image on watercolor paper and then paint away!

Our Creative Process. Here is Gretchen working on the 2007 Watercolor with an earlier painting to use as a color match. We typically talk over our "big idea" then sketch a pencil mockup of the concept before enlarging the image onto watercolor paper. 

1995 Watercolor - our first in the series was a straightforward picture of a turkey looking a bit worried. This look gave us an idea to put a personality to the bird and create a sequence of events that we could paint in future Thanksgivings!

1996 Watercolor - our first couple of years focused strickly on the bird. In this case - a cooked turkey with a pile of mashed potatoes in the distance and cranberry sauce in the lower right corner. We made the decision that year to start thinking about the next generation of watercolors and develop turkey stories with much happier endings!

1997 Watercolor - here are our young star turkeys hanging out beneath their mom. This was the year we really started the epic story which began with them escaping from the slauterhouse and carving (forgive my pun) out an adventurous life of travel, politics, crisis, and amazing feats!

2001 Watercolor - after escaping from the turkey farmer, we painted the flock of turkeys (alternatively called a rafter, gang or gobble) enjoying the warm sun and exotic drinks on a mexican beach. 

2003 Watercolor - lots of political happenings in the fall of 2003 and our gang was busy picketing the white house for "no turkeys left behind" and vegan causes. Peaceful protesting to abolish the Thanksgiving Holiday!

2004 Watercolor - Gretchen spent a semester studying art in Florence, Italy and was compelled to create a watercolor of our turkeys studying art overlooking the Duomo. Notice the backpacks and berets!

2006 Watercolor - I worked several years in the Middle East on architectural projects and was joined by my turkey friends at this desert oasis. They were dressed in traditional turkey clothing and enjoyed watching exotic turkey belly dancing. Sandals prevented the hot sand from burning their feet!

2008 Watercolor - this was a big year for presidential politics and our first turkey was elected to the white house! Here is our behind the scenes view of the convention. This watercolor had the greatest number of turkeys Gretchen and I had ever attempted to paint!

2010 Watercolor Mockup - Gretchen, her older brother Hunter and I spent a couple of weeks in Costa Rica and guess who we bumped into......our turkeys doing zip lines in the rainforest. As I mentioned earlier, we typically work up our big idea for the watercolor in pencil before producing the final painting.

2010 Watercolor - on a family vacation, father turkey and his two children are on a zip line high above the Costa Rican rainforest. They took pictures and posted them on beakbook (their version of facebook). Very exciting year!

Look for other interesting articles on my blog, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and read my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. 

 

 

 

NEW! - The 2010 Blog Collection , a 116-page catalog of my best blog posts from 2010 is now available on Blurb!  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1963744

 

Digital Watercolor of an Architectural Elevation

I have been exploring a new hybrid “Digital Watercolor” visualization process and recently found an opportunity to try my technique on an architectural elevation. Its now very common for architects to develop conceptual designs using Google SketchUp models and they often represent building elevations that are directly exported from those 3D models. My digital watercolor illustration method requires a few additional modeling steps and some hand coloring, but the results have a remarkable similarity to traditional watercolor paintings - perfect for representing design concepts with an informal, hand-drawn character!

The images below look somewhat repetitive but upon close inspection reveal the individual steps about my process from the initial SketchUp model to the final digital filtering effect. Three software programs were used for this visualization method; 1) Google SketchUp, 2) Shaderlight, and 3) Adobe Photoshop. Here is the story behind this exciting addition to your design communication tool set!

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SketchUp Model Development

Evolution of the 3D Model. My process began with the SketchUp model created by another architect (top image). The client needed a complete overhaul of the building facade by eliminating its original contemporary box design and reflecting a more traditional mission style massing, fenestration pattern and sloped roof forms. I modified the facade (middle image) and then populated the model with street level entourage that included signage, cars, trees and people. As I developed the model, the client added comments and the elevation continued to improve.

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Building Elevation “Step-by-Step”

Step 1: Basic SketchUp Elevation. This is the saved view from my updated SketchUp model with a dark blue sky color and shadows carefully positioned to accentuate the building massing. Notice that all of the glass windows have the same even tone of gray color. This is typical of SketchUp rendering output and can be greatly improved by the use of the photorealistic rendering plugin for SketchUp called Shaderlight.

Step 2: Shaderlight Rendered Elevation. I rendered the SketchUp model using Shaderlight and immediately discovered the beautiful quality of light, shadows, glass and especially the graduated blue tones of the sky. I rendered the view at a very high image size in order to capture the greatest amount of detail. Notice that all of the linework disappeared with the photorealistic rendering. A simple method of replacing the linework was to export the lines (edges) only from SketchUp and combine the layers.

Step 3: Exported SketchUp Edges. In the SketchUp model, I turned off the sky, shadows and materials. I exported a high resolution building elevation which basically captured the edges (linework) of the model. Make sure you export a high resolution file in order to maintain the detail, especially in the hand railings.

Step 4: Composite Image. I combined the Shaderlight rendering and linework image in Photoshop, merging them into an elevation that has both a high level of model detail and the wonderful quality of light. I kept the layers separate in the Photoshop composite in order to adjust their densities prior to printing.

Step 5: Lightened Composite Image. This was one of the most important steps in the visual process and worth a careful explanation. Reproducing the elevation at full color and line intensity would not allow for additional color to be added. Therefore, it was necessary to lighten both the linework and the building elevation color. In Photoshop, I gave the base image layer a 75% transparency and the linework layer a 50% transparency. Notice the big change in appearance between the images in step 5 versus step 4. 

Step 6: Hand Coloring with Markers (with enlarged view). This step was where the digital watercoloring technique originated. I printed the lightened image 10”x17” on heavy weight Epson coated bond paper using my Epson Stylus Photo 2000P printer. I then colored much of the building facade with very light Chartpak AD markers. I accented some of the window mullions and roof edges with a white Prismacolor pencil. I finally traced over many of the building edges, trees and people with a very light graphite pencil. The elevation still looked somewhat faded, but the final filtering step would add contrast back into the image.

Step 7: Photoshop Watercolor Filtering (with enlarged view). I scanned the final hand colored print at 300 dpi and imported the image into Adobe Photoshop. Using the watercolor filter, I applied the filter only once to the image and adjusted the contrast levels to deepen the blacks and lighten the whites of the image. This filtering process created the wonderful character for the image and coupled with the pencil linework gave the overall elevation an informal hand drawn and painted quality. 

Step 8: Additional Watercolor Filtering (unsuccessful). Out of curiosity, I applied a second round of watercolor filtering to the image. The additional filtering distorted the image too much and was unsuccessful in improving the watercolor effect. I did not use this version for any presentation. 

My hybrid digital watercolor process is a new visual tool for designers and I recommend that you first try following these steps and then experimenting with your own digital painting process. Let me know if you find a new and improved method and I’ll share your findings with others! Good luck!

 

Look for other interesting articles on my blog, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and read my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. 

 

 

 

NEW! - The 2010 Blog Collection , a 116-page catalog of my best blog posts from 2010 is now available on Blurb!  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1963744