Been a while…. The year has been ridiculously busy, thankfully. Haven’t really had much downtime, and believe it or not, other than a semi-slow July/August (three or four projects each month), I have been working straight through on a variety of projects large and small.
Development work (retail and residential) is coming back in force as the rising tide of the economy continues. Although there was always some level of private residential work being done through the recession, it seems to really be taking off again. In short, things have been busier than ever. Still no excuse for nearly a ten month delay in updating the blog.
I’ve been privileged to work on some fantastic projects, including about 18 or so renderings for the U.S. State department, on a couple different jobs. Sadly, most of it is confidential, as is much of the institutional and development work which has kept me busy over the year.
Best I can offer at this point is some cropped enlarged details from some of the work, uncredited and with some details obscured. The drawings range from sketchy concept work, to more formal, finished renderings.
Apologies for withholding project information.
These are details (about 2 inches x 6 inches) of some 11×17 sketches I did for a study of a landscaping master plan for a large property.
Some sketches done in a looser style, for a private academy, as part of a masterplan study. These are loose enough to turn around in just a few days, even a half dozen of them. These types of softer sketchier preliminary images connect with trustees, staff, students, and lay people (and donors!) far more than a screen-shot of a sketch-up model can, and can be pretty cost-effective.
Lifestyle and hospitality work is back in force as well. I did a small series of very atmospheric, highly considered images for a proposal at an historic property. Again, I can’t really provide any details, or show most of the work, but here’s a non-architectural detail, one that’s all about the entourage (the people and supporting elements in the image).
Here are some greatly enlarged details from loose studies done as part of a retail project. They were done on warm buff paper, with pencil and white highlights, digital color added.
Residential work lately has focused on preliminary studies, early concepts… Architects are finding that in a competitive environment, it’s always good to be expressive as early in the process as possible. Loose flexible sketches can be done the day before (or even day-of) a meeting, and again, clients respond more positively to them than they do to screenshots of an antiseptic sketch-up model… Sketches like these can help make decisions, move projects forward, and provide something for the client to become excited about, invested in emotionally. These are cropped details.
Although much of the work has some amount of color, there are times when monochromatic studies can be effective. The intent here was for atmospheric, painterly, loose-yet-detailed images. From a series of about eight semi-formals, these are digital, and were done from a roughly built model.
Here’s a small detail from a large aerial I did of a proposed University expansion. It was 22 inches wide, at about 400 dpi. …fairly large by today’s standards.
March saw about a month’s worth of time given over to executing 12 formal images depicting a modern building proposed for a semi-tropical location. Much attention was given to the highly developed landscape and exterior lighting plan, and in hewing closely to the existing context and local environment. These details are about an inch or two wide in the originals, which were 12×16, 300dpi.
Thanks for taking a look. I hope that the wide range of images here, from sketchy to atmospherically formal, will give an indication of the rendering options available at any point in a project’s life. There’s always a cost-effective solution, and one that almost always works with the schedule.
jeff stikeman architectural art :: blog 