How to Draw People
Many architects and designers are terrified to draw people. You have probably seen numerous renderings of buildings with minimal entourage and not a person in sight. The reason is that many designers have a perception that if the figures aren’t illustrated perfectly, they shouldn’t be in the drawing at all. Here are three simple tips for drawing people and putting the needed character, humanity and scale into drawings.
Draw Small People. As a rule, size all of the people in your drawings no taller than 1.5 inches. Many background people can be half that height and quickly drawn as simple animated shapes. Detail is minimal, faces are probably not illustrated and clothing is kept simple.
Trace From Other Sources. If you cannot draw a figure from imagination, trace it from a photograph, recycle a figure from a previous drawing or incorporate a computer generated figure. I have a collection of figures from SketchUp that I commonly use to trace from. Take digital photos of people in a shopping mall or a retail street and begin your own collection of people images to trace from.
Populate Your Drawing. Don’t be afraid to add groups of people to your drawing. As a rule, I tend to populate my drawings with no less than ten people. I will double that count for drawings of street scenes with shopping activities. Now take a second look at all of the above drawings and imagine what they would look like if all of the people were removed from them - quite a different scene!
If you would like to learn more about how to draw people, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and pick up my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition.
07/02/2010
SketchUp Tradigital Drawings: James Leese, AIA
Florida architect, urban planner and good friend James Leese, AIA has been visualizing design for over 40 years. He has a great eye for combining 3D SketchUp models with 2D visual effects and digital painting. James works seamlessly between SketchUp, Piranesi, Photoshop and other programs to create these beautiful scenes - some from actual projects and others from imagination.
Noteworthy is his creative integration of entourage elements into his scenes. He also has a wonderful sense of lighting, color and dramatic environments, influenced from living in a tropical location.
The above image was developed with a combination of SketchUp, Piranesi and Photography. Edges were turned off in the model to give a softer appearance to the architecture.
These night scenes were developed with accent lighting created in Photoshop or by dramatic side lighting from the SketchUp model.
My favorite James Leese image because of his terrific use of color and entourage. His transparent foreground trees add context without blocking our view of the building facade.
I am an advocate of merging numerous traditional and non-traditional visualization methods - or what I call Tradigital Drawings - and have identified many of them in my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition. If you would like to learn more about new forms of visualization, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and pick up my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition.
NEW Summer Drawing Workshop! 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!
06/25/2010
5Dthink: Merging 2D+3D Visualization
Designers have been trained to think either in two-dimensions (graphics and drawing) or in three-dimensions (physical and computer models) but not necessarily in terms of combining 2D with 3D into a new language of visual communication. Merging of two and three dimensional representation or what I call “5Dthink” - is a strategy of thinking (and designing) in simultaneous layers - creating design visualization that has never before been so available, rapidly generated, affordable and easy to learn!
I will continue to explore 5Dthink in future blog posts, but wanted to quickly present an example of what I believe is the next generation of visual communication. The test perspective below combines 3-dimensional modeling with 2-dimensional drawing. It seamlessly integrates three separate software programs (Google SketchUp, SU Podium and Adobe Photoshop), digital reprographics and traditional hand drawing. The end product is a hybrid image that represents the merging of high technology and hand drawing.
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Step 1: Base SketchUp Model. For this test, I downloaded a house model from 3D Warehouse and added some basic landscaping. I did not include people in the scene. Basic default lighting and shadow adjustment emphasized the deep porch and roof overhangs.
Step 2: SketchUp Model Preparation. In advance of the rendering process, I adjusted the SketchUp model “shadow settings” to Dark 25 and Light 35. This significantly darkened the model view but was necessary to pop the shadows in the rendering process.
Step 3: SU Podium Rendering. Rendered in just over 6 minutes, this image was created with the SketchUp plugin SU Podium generated a photo-realistic rendering of the house with accurate light modeling (compare the shadows on the four front porch columns) and reflective glass on the windows. This 3D digital rendering was far superior to the exported SketchUp scene, but was only an interim step in my 5Dthink process. Time to add 2D!
Step 4: Image Photoshop Filtering. I filtered the image using the filter>artistic>watercolor tool which popped many of the edges and added contrast to the wall and roof textures. This also masked the photographic dominance of the trees by giving them a more painted appearance.
Step 5: Image Printing. Again in Photoshop, I created a duplicate layer of the background image and adjusted the transparency to 75% of the original intensity. This significantly lightened the image - a necessary step in preparation for adding markers, colored pencils and hand delineation. I printed the image on my Epson Workforce 1100 at 7”x15” on Epson photo quality ink jet paper (matte finish smooth coated paper).
Step 6: Hand Drawn Character. Using a few light colored Chartpak AD markers, I added back color to the windows, walls, roof, grass, trees and landscaping. I did not color the sky. I overdrew the building edges with multiple overlapping pencil lines which gave the image such a hand drawn appearance. Several colors of Prismacolor pencils were used on different surfaces. Final white pencil highlights and black pencil stipple transformed the computer image into what now appears as a hand drawn rendering!