Inspiration - Schell Lewis

I happened on an old Harvard Magazine (March April 2009) yesterday while sorting out moving boxes in the attic. (No, I’m not Ivy, my son is). It had an article on the Supreme Court with a rendering of the Supreme Court building in Washington. The rendering was by Schell Lewis, an excellent but now forgotten architectural delineator.

It struck a chord with me. First, it was sad that such a talented artist was now completely forgotten. And second, it reminded me that I had gathered images for a blog post on him; a post that was filed away when I found so little biographical information.

Since I’m more interested in the art than the artist, I’ve decided to post what little I’ve got.

According to the 1920 census, Schell Lewis was born about 1887 in Moline, Illinois (I found a site suggesting that he was born in 1875, but that seems improbable). By 1920 he became known for his skill in architectural delineation. He worked in the office of Charles A. Platt for years, but by the late 1920s he was doing professional renderings for other architects. He was active into his 60s, with little evidence of age. The latest image I could find was from 1960.

The following is from Pencil Points magazine, vol. 2, 1921
“Though Mr. Schell Lewis has made many excellent perspective drawings and sketches he has not specialized in rendering… His charcoal drawings, made as a means of studying the designs in the office and not as presentation drawings, convey the character of the designs admirably and are done with great facility.
Mr. Lewis was born in Moline, Ill., but his family removed to New York when he was a youth. After acquiring the rudiments of drafting he entered an architect’s office in New York. Then, after a few attempts, he secured a place in the office of Mr. Charles A. Platt, in whose organization he has been continuously excepting six months with the U. S. Shipping Board and six month with Trowbridge & Ackerman.
All of Mr. Lewis’ work shows an appreciation of architectural character as well as a knowledge of architectural design.”

I first saw Lewis’s work in Drafting Room Practice by Eugene Clute (Pencil Points Press 1928). I found an old copy in a used book store years ago. There was no biographical information, but they reproduced a number of wonderful architectural detail studies done in charcoal.

The only other story I found concerning Lewis’s work is in The President as Architect: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Top Cottage, By John G. Waite Associates, Architects. In 1938 President Roosevelt sketched out the design for a “cottage” on his Hyde Park property north of New York City. Lewis, who did regular work for Henry J. Toombs, FDR’s favorite architect, was brought on to do a couple pencil renderings for a publicity brochure. Being a “traditional” renderer familiar with traditional architecture, he fit in perfectly with FDR’s love of the old country style of building.

Here are a few additional images which show something of Lewis’s rendering process. His preliminary sketches are nice examples of value studies produced by all artists of the time. The preliminary working out the light and dark areas ensures an image that presents the subject in a pleasing way. See my post on Gustave Doré for more of the same, as well as all of my posts on composition.

Prelim sketch for Cadet Barracks at U S Military Academy

Finished rendering of Cadet Barracks at U S Military Academy

Prelim study for an aerial view of a Church

Prelim sketch for a rendering of a Church

Finished rendering of a Church

Unfinished Prelim study for a Church

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The following images are all of the Schell Lewis renderings that I could find on the internet. They are arranged in roughly chronological order. Comments are included as I felt the need.

1088 Park Avenue New York City, 1924

This and the next 6 renderings are nice examples of subtle value manipulation used to enliven otherwise dull forms.

Apartment Block in New York City, 1926

Proposed Development at Warm Springs, Georgia, 1926

111 John Street, New York City, 1927

15 East 39th Street New York City, 1928

1441 Broadway, New York City, 1929

Bronx County Jail, New York City, 1931

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Proposed Chapel at Kent School, Kent, Connecticut  1929

The image above was the only interior rendering that I found.

Georgia Building, 1933

Chapin School in New York City, 1935

The following 4 renderings are from the 1939 World’s Fair, held in New York City. Both Hugh Ferriss and John Wenrich did illustrations for the fair.

Court of the States Building, Inner court collonnade & tower

Court of the States Building, Inner court

Court of the States Building, Spanish grouping

Court of the States Building, West court

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Band Building, 1947

Mallory Gymnasium, Rhodes College, 1949

Toronto City Hall proposal, 1955

Trezevant Hall, Rhodes College, 1959

Moore Moore Infirmary, Rhodes College, 1960

Proposal for Mahan Hall at West Point, 1967

Lewis seems to have preferred pencil throughout his career, but was clearly a master of ink as well, as shown in the last two images I found. The first is copied from the internet and is very low resolution. The second image (noted simply as "brick house") is scanned from Arthur L. Guptill's classic Rendering in Pen and Ink, and is detailed enough to show both the overall composition and the satisfying details.

Burrow Library, Rhodes College, 1951

So, what do I take away from all this?
Schell Lewis is inspiring because he blends the large, conceptual view with the rendering of crisp detail. “Fine” artists can often get away with a broad-brush splash of emotion or symbolism (the rest is commentary). Architects, on the other hand, are usually obsessed with the details: “God is in the details”. But both scales of view are necessary.
The architectural illustrator must needs do both. Yet, it is unusual to find someone who can mix the two extremes so seamlessly as Schell Lewis did.

Learning from Traditional Painting

The Connoisseur by Henry Herbert La Thangue 1887

An artist’s brushwork is a fascinating personal marker to collectors of traditional paintings. The size and character of the brush strokes, create an underlying pattern in a painting which is interesting to see up close. As an architect and self-taught illustrator, this was not something I had considered until it was pointed out to me by I.M. Pei. 

Following are examples from traditional painting that show unification via texture and brush strokes (click on image for enlargement).

Dew-Drenched Furze by John Everett Millais has a rather obsessive texture which is appropriate in depicting vegetation. The fairly narrow value range is suggestive of wallpaper. And yet, I find it mesmerizing.

Autumn Afternoon by Frederick McCubbin is an impressionist sketch that uses the rough brush strokes as a baseline. I don’t think that the painting would have been as successful if any element had been detailed and finished. 

Many of the artists from the turn of the century (that is, last century) were focused on treating the surface of the painting as an artistic thing itself. Creating a recognizable image while highlighting the blobs of paint produces an enjoyable tension in the viewer’s mind. Surf and Rocks by Frederick Childe Hassam (1906) is a clear example of that approach.

The simple use of rough painting surface can give a certain unity on its own. The canvas tooth of Summer Sunshine by Gyula Agghazy shows this. The fabric grid is hard to see, but it permeates the entire image.

Most of these examples are of limited use to architectural illustration because a client wants to see in detail what he is buying with his millions. Even so, a good renderer can choose a media or support paper that allows both detail and texture. 

Opus Headquarters by D.E. Jamieson 1999

Canary Wharf by Steve Oles 1985

Aeon - The Architecture of Time pg. 4
 by L. Woods 1982

Still, it is a lesson that I gratefully learned.

Hand & CAD - The Wireframe Years - 1

Columbus Circle, Steamboat Springs & the Queens Museum.

When computers began to be used in architectural offices, they were unstable and relatively primitive. I lived through that period of frustration, elation and work-a-rounds.  This is just one of a number of posts I want to write about it – partly, just to leave a record of the work, but mainly as an example of mixing the digital with the hand.

In the early 1980s 3D computer modeling was not an option in architectural offices. Just buying a computer with the requisite memory and graphics was way too expensive. But in 1985 the office in which I worked bought an early CAD computer and a very early version of AutoCad, which was used for Building Department submission drawings. Simple diagramatic drawings were created, with much computer crashing and gnashing of teeth.  The simplest 3D modeling was a faint glimmer in the recesses of that early software.  

The layout above was done for the Columbus Circle Competition in 1985. The red curves show where I used a print out of circles in perspective from that early CAD computer. Without those print outs, the semicircular façade of the proposed building would have been a frustrating job of sketching and re-sketching. With a large plot of these curves the layout was not much harder than a run-of-the-mill hand layout.

In 1987 I bought my own CAD computer, and played with it whenever I could find the time. I spent my nights working on small rendering jobs, and very occasionally I found that I could use the (at that time) primitive AutoCad program to help speed my work. The sketch above mixed a photo of an existing building with a CAD view of rotated cubes and some hand layout work.

This interior view of the same job used a crude wireframe of the ceiling and floor (now lost), and hand layout work. The computer made the curved lattice and joints easy. In both drawings the paste-up layout was made uniform by redrawing it using ink on mylar.

Another project that used complex curves was a ski resort condominium in Steamboat Springs. In general, the building could have been worked out via hand or computer, but the ski-slope-like roof posed a problem.

By limiting the model to the visible walls I only needed to construct a few 3D “faces” for balconies and railings. I worked out shade and shadow on a letter sized printout, and used that as the center of a hand drawn setting in the ski resort area.

A pencil sketch of the final was Xeroxed and worked over with pastel…

…and a more finished sketch was tried over the ink final.

The final art was finished with airbrushed transparent ink on a photographic copy of the ink drawing.

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Early in 1989 I had the chance to do a rendering of the renovation of the Queens Museum, on the site of the many World’s Fairs that were hosted by New York City.  Built for the 1939 Fair, and used as the home of the United Nations from 1946 to 1950, the museum is now a venue for arts and educational programs, as well as being the permanent location for the “Panorama of the City of New York”. 

The renovation architect was Rafael Vignoly, who has since gone on to much bigger projects. It happened that he had organized a small 3D CAD group in his office, and they produced the wireframe that I used. You can see the actual wireframe lines (created on a “pin printer”) to the right of the pastel sketch.

Another pastel and pencil sketch exploring a brighter approach. The lines of the building in the reflecting pool were created by copying the building as a “block”, and placing the copy upside down directly below the building itself. The plaza layers were turned off, and a print made of the museum and its mirror below. It was then cut into the rest of the image, producing a “reflection” in the water of the pool. 

The final layout was printed full size, and then reproduced on photographic paper. I airbrushed opaque white over the entire image to grey out the black lines. Then I masked and airbrushed each area with black India ink, starting with the sky. Streaked areas in the reflecting pool were produced by erasing back the airbrushed ink (a technique that worked well with some inks, but not with others).

Next: the Tokyo International Forum.