Design Drawing Skills and Techniques for Interior Designers, Designers, Architects, and Landscape Architects

• COLOR DRAWING FOR COMMUNICATION
  
  "Although draftsmanship is no longer the price of admission to a design career, those who master the language of drawing are likely to see, to think, and to communicate with more sophistication than those who only master the computer. Aside from this competitive advantage, however, there's a deeper satisfaction to be derived from draftsmanship: the thrill of vanquishing a monster-sized, fire-breathing design problem with nothing more than a small, sharpened stick."
  Marty Neumeier

• Part 1
  Initial Considerations
  
  Those who design places for use by othersarchitects, landscape architects, and interior designersengage in a specialized form of communication. They first create images of their ideas about the three-dimensional forms and spaces that make these places, but they create them on two-dimensional surfaces.
  
  To do this effectively, a designer must understand the visual phenomena on which these kinds of images are based. For example, before she can create even a simple line drawing of a place idea, the designer must first understand the phenomena of perspective. Once she posesses this basic understanding, she is then in a position to learn the techniques necessary to recreate these phenomena on a sheet of paper. She can engage in a picture-based language, using lines, by which her ideas about places can be universally understood.
  
  The same holds true for light and its natural consequence, color. When you begin learning an approach to drawing your design ideas in color, it is important that you observe the phenomena of light and color that surround you every dayand night. As you observe these phenomena, ask yourself, ''How would I create this on paper?" This book attempts to help you answer that question.
  
  As a designer, you will also find it necessary to express your ideas and observations about color in words. To this end, you should understand the three dimensions of color and how they are interrelated. The last part of this chapter introduces you to these basic color terms and the importance of their relationships.
  
  Phenomena of Color and Light
  
  To successfully illustrate design ideas, it is instructiveand, more to the point, necessaryto observe the color phenomena that surround you in your everyday life. Ten such basic phenomena are briefly discussed and illustrated here. You will discover more, but these 10 should help you to understand the relationship between what you see around you and the techniques shown later in the book. It is hoped that they will also inspire you to use the power of your own unique observations.

• Local Tone
  
  Every object has an intrinsic lightness or darkness, regardless of its illumination. This phenomenon is known as local tone, a term coined by artist and teacher Nathan Goldstein (1977). A typical brick, for example, has a much darker local tone than a block of white marble. When both are exposed to sunlight, each will have lighter and darker sides, but the illuminated faces of the brick will still be darker than the shaded faces of the marble (1-1).
  
  When you create color drawings that illustrate various forms, whether buildings, landscapes, or interiors, each form will possess a local tone owing to your choice of its material. Each form will have lighter and darker surfaces, as in the preceding example, depending on the location of the light sources. The degree of lightness or darkness of these surfaces will be in proportion to the lightness or darkness of the local tones of the forms.
  
  Chiaroscuro
  
  The term chiaroscuro refers to the light-to-dark shading of an illustrated form in order to make it appear three-dimensional. Its use has a long history in art. Leonardo da Vinci said of chiaroscuro that "he who excels all others in that part of the art, deserves the greatest praise" (Birren 1965, 77).
  
  In a black-and-white drawing, these shadings and shadows may range, of course, from light gray to black. However, this is not the case in color drawing. Gray to black shadings and shadows in a color drawing (unless on a gray form) will appear dull and lifeless. Instead, as figure 1-1 illustrates, you can see that the color of a surface in shade or shadow usually remains the same color as its illuminated sides, only darker, and that the degree of darkness depends on the local tone of the form.

Figure 1-1
Notice the sunlit and shaded/shadowed surfaces of the pitcher, table, and floor.
Each has shades or shadows whose degree of lightness or darkness corresponds
to its local tone. For example, the side of the pitcher in shade is light, whereas the
shadow of the pitcher on the table is quite dark.The medium-toned floor has a
corresponding medium shadow. Look closely at the colors of the shadows on
the floor. They are not gray or black, but darker versions of the corresponding
sunlit colors of the floor.

• Color of Shade and Shadow
  
  You can see, however, under certain conditions, that the shades and shadows on forms also take on subtle colorations other than only the darker versions of their illuminated surfaces.
  
  This condition most commonly occurs when the shaded or shadowed surface faces a source of colored light. This source may be direct light, or it may be light reflected from a nearby form that is itself brightly illuminated. A common example of this phenomenon appears on the shaded surfaces of buildings on a clear day. These surfaces are illuminated by the bright blue "light source" of the sky, resulting in a surface that is a mixture of the building's surface material and the blue of the sky (1-2). The shaded face of a red brick building, for example, can have a purplish cast to it. This is because the resultant color falls somewhere on the color wheel between the red of the brick and the blue of the sky (see figure 1-12).
  
  This effect is also readily apparent on neutralwhite or graysurfaces. Notice the colors of the shadows on snow, concrete, or worn (light gray) asphalt on a sunny day. The shadows on these surfaces appear bluish, so blue in fact that you can see yet another color phenomenon manifest itself. The sunlit portion of these surfaces will appear slightly "warm," or tinged with a pinkish orange. This effect, called simultaneous contrast, forms in our perception when we behold a color next to a neutral surface. We perceive the neutral surface as tinged with the color opposite on the color wheel, its complementary color. The more intense the color, the more it tends to tinge its neighbors with its complement. A red apple and its surrounding green leaves will appear particularly brilliant against one another.
  
  Simultaneous contrast was written about as early as the sixteenth century. M. E. Chevreul was the first to study this effect in depth in the early nineteenth century, and the phenomenon was utilized extensively by the Impressionists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Hope and Walch 1990). It is an established part of the visual language of artists and illustrators today. Color contrasts are discussed further in Ch 6.

•  

Figure 1-2
The surfaces in shade and shadow are alive with color. The pink stucco
grades to purplish on the upper left-hand wall owing to its reflection of
blue sky; the dark gray foreground floor and windowsill also reflect the
blue sky. The right-hand wall takes on an orange cast, reflected from the
sunlit floor tile. Notice the reflected colors on the shaded and shadowed
surfaces in the space beyond.

• Gradation
  
  Have you ever noticed that very few flat surfaces in your surroundings actually appear uniformly colored or illuminated? Most appear uneven, graduating from one color to another and one level of lightness or darkness to another. This effect is particularly easy to notice on large surfaces like walls, floors, and ceilings but occurs on most all surfaces if you look carefully (1 -3).
  
  Continuous surfaces gradate in appearance because of their proximity to sources of direct light and because of the light and colors reflected onto them (and into them) from nearby objects and surfaces. These gradations usually appear gradual on matte surfaces and become sharper with the increasing specularity or "polish" of a surface. A concrete or drywall surface will host more even color and light gradations than one of, say, brushed stainless steel. Polished wood or glass will exhibit much sharper boundaries between changes in light and color.
  
  You will find gradations a useful tool in color illustration. They make surfaces appear more realistic and result in illustrations that are far more dynamic. For example, in a technique used by fine arts painters called forcing the shadow, a shadow is graded darker toward its boundary with the illuminated portion of the surface. The illuminated portion is graded lighter toward this same boundary. The result is an unexpectedly brilliant effect of illumination. The same technique is often employed between the colors of foreground and background elements in an illustration. A background element may gradually be darkened and cooled (made more bluish) in hue as it moves toward its boundary with a foreground element, whose treatment is just the opposite: it is lightened and warmed (made more reddish) in hue as it approaches the same boundary. This is a useful way to make forms appear more distinct. These effects are easy to create and impart activity and sparkle to an illustration.
  
  
   

Figure 1-3
Gradations of color and tone occur on virtually every surface of this illustration as a
result of illumination and reflected color. Gradations are particularly effective
in making interior design illustrations appear vital and realistic.
 

• Multiplicity of Color
  
  You see your surroundings in a variety of colors. A green tree, a wall of red brick, a brown rock, and yellow field grass are common objects whose colors are familiar to you. But most of the colors you see are really visual averages or mixtures of a multitude of colors. The clump of winter field grasses that look yellow from a distance are, upon closer inspection, made up of such colors as magentas, ochres, grays, and greensas well as a variety of different kinds of yellow.
  
  As you observe your surroundings more closely, you may find these subtle variations of color in natural and exterior architectural surroundings difficult to describe or illustrate satisfactorily. This is in part due to these visual averages, called medial mixtures (1-4). It is also because many natural materials refract light as a result of their water, mineral, and cellulose content, splitting the light into its component colors on a microscopic scale. As indicated earlier, both exterior and interior man-made materials are also rarely of a single, consistent color, because of gradations, the reflection of color, and the impacts of such phenomena as simultaneous contrast.
  
  Close observation of your surroundings will lead you to see that your world literally scintillates with color. Impressionist painters Seurat, Signac, van de Velde, and many others utilized these observations in their paintings. At a distance the colors of their forms appear soft and subtle, but closer inspection reveals that each area of color is made up of many different colors. These colors are not mixed, but placed side by side with tiny brushstrokes, which imparts an incredible richness to the painting and allows the viewer, rather than the artist, to create the final colors of the images. You will explore similar approaches to color illustration later, in Part II, by mingling a variety of color media to create your color images, including marker, pastel, and color pencil.
   

Figure 1-4
The colors in this illustration are composed of a mingling of many different colors applied with marker, pastel,
and color pencilall on pale green Canson paper. The color of the foreground grasses, for instance, was
made with three markers, two pastel colors, and five color pencils.

• Atmospheric Perspective
  
  Forms that recede into the distance undergo a color change. Generally, they become lighter, cooler (more bluish), and more grayed. This is due in part to the layers of humidity, dust, and pollutants that accumulate in proportion to the distance between the form and the viewer (1-5). This phenomenon is known as atmospheric perspective.1
  
  Your subconscious conditioning through lifelong experience with atmospheric perspective may lie behind a related phenomenon. Cool colorsblue greens, blues, and purple bluesappear to recede from the viewer. Conversely, colors opposite on the color wheel, warm colorsreds, yellow reds, and yellowstend to advance toward the viewer, particularly when used in conjunction with cool colors. Another explanation for our apparent spatial positioning of color may lie in how the lenses of our eyes refract color. Reddish colors focus at a point behind the retina, whereas bluish colors focus at a point in front of the retina. The lens becomes convex to focus on a reddish image, "pulling it nearer," and flattens to focus on a bluish image. This flattening of the lens "pushes the [bluish] image back and makes it appear smaller and farther away" (Birren 1965, 130).

• Reflections
  
  Reflective surfaces present the colors they "see" back to you. In most cases, however, on such surfaces as glass, water, and polished furniture the reflected colors are less intense than those of the objects reflected. When a reflective surface is darker than its surroundings, such as a window in a sunlit wall, notice that the colors it reflects are less intense and darker than those of the objects reflected.
  
  Mirrored surfaces such as chrome and polished stainless steel usually distort the shapes of the objects reflected, but reflect their colors exactly (1-6).

Figure 1-5
In each successive layer of buildings and landforms, care was taken to lighten the
colors, make them more bluish to-pale purple, and make them weaker (more grayed).
These color effects reinforce the diminution in size of the forms to create the illusion
of distance. This effect was further enhanced by making the foreground elements
warm (yellow reddish) in color.
 

• 
  1 The art world sometimes refers to this phenomenon as aerial perspective. The use of this term for our purposes would be confusing, since an aerial perspective in architecture and landscape architecture refers to a perspective view of a subject from above. Such views are also known as "birds-eye" views.

Figure 1-6
The colors reflected into the window and glass tabletop are weaker than those
of the objects reflected, but those reflected into the polished stainless-steel
column are not. As windows in a building become higher and more oblique
to the viewer's sight line, they progressively reflect more sky. Note the
forced shadow on the patio surface and the gradation of the wall color.

     Copyright ©    8-2- 2009   Dr. Abuhani. All rights reserved

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