Jim Leggitt / Drawing Shortcuts

Thanksgiving Family Watercolor Tradition!

My daughter Gretchen and I have been painting a watercolor during the Thanksgiving holiday for the past 16 years. Why? Because we believe that family traditions such as doing a piece of artwork together has meaning, creates a long-lasting memory and is completely fun!

I wrote about our annual art project and the story behind all of those crazy turkeys in a blog several years ago. Please take a look at it and read all about the lives of those famous birds that avoided the roasting pan and flew off (do turkeys actually fly?) to all parts of the world doing great things.  Enjoy our family tradition that we will certainly continue for many years to come!

The following watercolor paintings represent a small portion of the paintings we’ve created telling a wild story about a family of turkeys and their adventures. Actually, many of our paintings reflect certain events in our lives such as a special vacation trip, political event or worthy news event. 

How do we paint these when we live in two different cities and can’t get together for Thanksgiving? We found an answer to that problem a couple of years ago now that Gretchen has moved to Seattle and teaches art at a private school.

We first come up with an idea, sketch it out and email each other with feedback. I then block out the drawing in light pencil on watercolor paper and mail her the paper from Denver along with a watercolor set that we’ve always used. She paints the watercolor in Seattle and mails the completed artwork back to me for final “touchup” and scanning. Its that easy!

2011 Biking Turkeys. Last year’s them was about turkeys having fun on fat tire bicycles. We each have cruiser bikes and enjoy riding around our neighborhood on them. Gretchen has many friends in Seattle that bike everywhere and don’t even own cars.

2012 Turkeys on Mars. Well, this year has been a memorable year for our turkeys. This is the “mockup sketch” for the 2012 watercolor celebrating the historic NASA mars rover mission, the retiring of the space shuttle and Felix Baumgartner’s 5-mile leap from space. I’ll post the final painting soon!

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

Transit Development Hybrid Drawing

One of my favorite hybrid drawing types is one I call “composite drawing”, in which I print the scene from a computer model on a high quality paper and then draw directly onto the print with a pen and colored markers. The resulting visual is a beautiful blend of computer model and hand drawing. 

This hybrid technique saves an incredible amount of rendering time and produces a rendering that has a lot of character, authenticity and hand craftsmanship. I was asked to visualize a proposed transit oriented development and worked closely with the architects who generated the very detailed SketchUp model. My “step-by-step” process for creating the rendering is as follows:

Step 1 - SketchUp View. I was given a SketchUp model from the architect and asked to develop more of the open spaces in front of the residences and at the light rail station. Notice the severe 3-point perspective on this original view. I eventually changed the focal length of the view which eliminated the severe pitch of the building end walls.

Step 2 - Enhance the Public Spaces. These two side by side images show the initial open space design and the modified public spaces that include outdoor dining, concentrated placement of trees and a feature tower element to serve as an organizing element on site. All of the site improvements were approved by the client before proceeding to the final rendering.

Overall Site SketchUp Model

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Step 3 - Exported SketchUp Model Layers. The linework from typical SketchUp model exported views is often too heavy and dominates the scene. I prefer to lighten the linework by exporting a SketchUp view in different formats and then combining them together in Photoshop with lightened qualities. The left image is the straight exported SketchUp view without any edges (linework). The center image is the exported linework. I lightened that linework by 50% in Photoshop and combined the two images to generate the composited view on the right. 

Step 4 - Printing and Hand Coloring with Markers. I plotted the aerial perspective 15”x30” on coated paper and traced over much of the model edges with a fine point roller ball pen. I added chartpak AD marker colors and a minor amount of colored pencil. Notice how loose the pen illustration was and how much of the original SketchUp model remained untouched. This blend of hand drawing and computer model was ideal for representing accuracy of the architectural design along with the character of human activity.

 Final Drawing Detail. 

 

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

 

 

 

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