Saturday, May 22, 2010

Your Development Home in a Good Neighborhood




I didn't do only space, science fiction, and fantasy art during my career as a freelance illustrator. I am trained as an architectural renderer, that is, someone who can take a blueprint and draw something using that information that looks like what the building is going to be like before it's built. I did a lot of these during the building boom of the 90s. This is a more modest house than some of the mansions and "McMansions" that I illustrated. It was part of a long series of models that you could order, with various options. Brick or siding. Side garage entrance or front. Recessed doorway or portico. People had money to buy new houses back then, or at least they thought they had money. This house may be in foreclosure by now.

My renderings were in watercolor, or pencil, or ink. I never used a computer, my perspectives were all drawn by estimation and visual reckoning. Very few, if any, architectural renderings are done this way any more. They are done with dazzling precision by people in the Far East using computer rendering programs. I never learned to use these programs, and my watercolor rendering skills are useless now. As it is I'm still trying to learn to use Photoshop for doing illustration, with varying and frustrating results.

"Windson Homes" series was done in watercolor and pen on paper, each rendering 18" x 14", done in about 1992.

2 comments:

Tristan Alexander said...

Why are your watercolor skills now useless? Just because some stuff is now done by computer does not nagate the value of your work!

emikk said...

When hand rendering skills go away, well, that'll be the day!