I.M. Pei

Ieoh Ming Pei died 16 May 2019.

He is described in Wikipedia as “a Chinese-American architect,” but that hardly does him justice. In fact, he was a curious amalgam of Western and Eastern, modern and classical, businessman and artist, pragmatist and theorist.

Other people were closer to Pei, and there are plenty of books and articles covering his life and work. Here I’d simply like to offer a couple of examples of his genius as shown in his comments on renderings I did for him.

He had a sure eye:

Many designers and architects have a hard time making up their minds. Mr. Pei was a pleasure to work for, because he knew what he wanted. When I finished the rendering of the Louvre, it did not show the fountains spraying. 

Mr. Pei insisted that they were necessary to complete the visual effect of the design. He was right: The fountain spray seems to moderate between the hard geometry of the glass pyramid and the ornate classicism of the old Louvre façade.

He was steeped in both art and architecture:

I always make pastel color sketches of any proposed rendering. When I showed Mr. Pei my sketches for the Athens Museum of Modern Art, he saw the mottled effect of the pastel in the sky and insisted that the effect be reproduced in the final. 

I had thought the mottling was a bug,but he saw it as an impressionist feature (along with the “van Gogh trees”). Again, he was right.

Finally…

He brought a classical eye to the ever-churning world of modern architecture. His best work shows a nuanced balance between the desperate newness of modern life and the ageless beauty of simple forms.

He will be missed.

Airbrush Demo - I M Pei's Louvre

The Louvre in Paris has been around for hundreds of years, beginning as a businesslike medieval castle, and developing into a royal palace. It acquired its present style in the Renaissance under Francis I, who tore down the old castle and began to develop the dignified, sculpted facades we see today.  The Louvre has long housed a private museum for the French kings, and under Louis XIV, the Sun King, the state academies were established there.  With the revolution the museum became a public institution and the royal academies became the Ecole des Beaux Arts (and were moved to their own digs).  The photo above shows the courtyard at the turn of the century.  The monument in the foreground to Leon Gambetta was removed during World War II, but otherwise the configuration of the Louvre was unchanged until the arrival of Pei's pyramid in 1989.
The following images are the scanned slides I took while producing a comprehensive image of the new construction.  For anyone interested in airbrush work it should be interesting.  For the rest of you, scroll down to the end to enjoy the finished product.  (The lighting was less than optimal, so there will be glare and uneven color, but hopefully you can still understand the process)

This is the concept sketch showing the enclosing courtyard and the underground visitors area.  It is clunky, but the basic idea is there.

Here is the computer model of the pyramids with the surrounding existing buildings blocked in.  The general idea of looking into the courtyard never changed.

The same model with the underground areas modeled. This was the final viewpoint.

A view from under the large pyramid showing escalators and the spiral stairs going up to the courtyard level.  As with all my rendering work, there is more detail than would ever be needed.

The model seen from the final viewpoint.  This print, about 31 inches wide, will be part of the underlay for the final ink line drawing.

The idea now was to hand draw the existing facades onto the blocked areas of the computer model.  Photos such as that above served as rough underlays to guide the work.

Here is a rough pencil sketch of the combination computer & hand drawing.

And, here is the finished ink line drawing.  The final drawing was ink (using technical pen) on mylar, and was 31" x 15".

 A close-up of the central section.

A detail of the same drawing at something close to the actual size of the final drawing.

Here is a color sketch, approved by the client, and pinned up over my drawing board to keep the final idea in mind.  Obviously, the color and detail will be developed as the final painting is done, but it is always good to have something reminding you what you promised to do.

The ink drawing printed on matte photo paper.  I got in the habit of working on a reproduction, as a safe-guard against some major catastrophe, such as having one of the children drooling on it.  In the worst case scenario I could start again with a complete line drawing.

First, a layer of white sprayed to reduce the lines to grey, and to reduce the chance of oily fingerprints on the paper.  All opaque paint was acrylic airbrush color, "Medea Comart Opaque" in this case.

Now a mask of frisket film is cut covering the building, and the sky is sprayed with ultramarine and red transparent ink. All color spraying used a transparent drawing ink, "Pelikan Drawing Ink A".  In this way the line drawing would show through the color, and I could play down the lines with opaque white, or add to the strength of the line by re-inking later.

The same is done to the blank space at the bottom of the rendering using ultramarine, red and black.

The mask over the building is removed.  The lines on the original art are still clear, in spite of the overexposure of this photo.

A mask is cut so that only the old existing buildings are revealed.

The existing buildings are given a gradual darkening toward the roof, suggesting the lighting which will be coming from the courtyard lamps and the pyramid itself.

The work area.  In an unfinished cabin.  In the Adirondacks.  My wife, Linda, sitting on our bed at the left.  All to remind myself and any reader, that it is you, and not your studio or equipment that count.

The dark tiled roofs are masked and sprayed.

The rendering at this stage with all masking removed.

Mask the existing building and spray with a tan mix of transparent ink.

Further darkening and warming of the building, including the roof areas.  You can see the roof area mask section floating in the sky.

Mask removed.

The ground plane of the courtyard is masked and sprayed.

The rendering "in situ".  Note the color sketch pinned to the wall.  Also, the open window; a necessary bit of ventilation for airbrush work.

The pyramid is masked and sprayed with opaque white to suggest the interior glow of the glass and steel.  One of the most difficult problems in this job was the balancing of the different lighting.  The existing buildings were stone with punched windows, meaning that the stone was warmly lit by the courtyard lighting, while the windows were either dark reflections or brightly lit from within.  The pyramid was a glowing lantern defined by the structural lattice brightly lit inside and darkly silhouetted on the outside.  The interior spacees below ground needed to have a warm, even lighting, as you would expect in a well designed public space.

The structures in the underground areas are masked and sprayed to give form.

Here, considerable hand work has been done, adding people and detail in general.  Also, the pyramid has had its diagonal structural lattice drawn in white opaque paint with a ruling pen.

Further detailing, and the pyramid front face has been given dark lines showing the dark silhouette of the diagonal lattice structure.

On the drawing board.  Almost finished.

Final art, as photographed on the drawing board.

When Pei saw the final he was quite impressed, but he insisted that the fountains be "turned on".  He said that he insisted they turn the actual fountains on every time he visited the Louvre in Paris. This image is from a brochure since I didn't have the time to photograph the final (fountains) version.

The final professionally photographed.

And some detail...

A photograph of a similar view.


- St. Vincent airbrush demo
- Airbrush Demo - Cesar Pelli's Petronas Towers

Truth and Artistic License

A review of the truth, or lack of truth in architectural renderings.

Truth in Advertising...  We are always “spinning.”  Humans tend to exaggerate, massage and forget the past, and the same applies to the way we present ourselves and our work to others.  I once knew a couple who always acted insanely happy with their marriage, children, house, careers… everything.  I later learned that they had all the same trouble and disappointments as the rest of us; they simply “sold” it all as wonderful.  There have been few projects I have worked on that were strictly honest.  The preliminary sketch below was part of a legal presentation to prospective owners, and was truthful in all aspects from the brick color to the placement of streetlights to the typical angle of the afternoon sun.  It is hardly my favorite rendering, but accurate it is.

A typical honest lie is the use of axonometric drawings.  There are times, such as the long street shown below, when a street level perspective simply can’t show the entire space.  An axonometric drawing can present information but at the same time be completely unreal.

Similarly, if something is standing in between you and the object you want to see, an illustrator can eliminate it.  The preliminary sketch of my rendering of I MPei’s Louvre shows the underground architecture by dissolving the foreground plaza.  The glass pyramid is revealed to be a brilliant solution to an old circulation problem, as well as a brash architectural statement.

Interior illustrators have always wrestled with the problem of looking through walls.  This corporate headquarters staircase would have been distorted if I hadn’t backed up through an existing wall.  The outline of the wall opening can be seen in the faint dotted line on the left.

Computer renderings deal with the same interior wall problem by having cutting planes that can be placed in various places in the model.  The lobby below is being viewed from outside the glass curtainwall.  The mullions and glass have been eliminated in the original model.

 

The smaller the space the more distortion you can expect.  Elevator cabs are a special case in that any normal perspective would distort the ceiling or the floor or both.  A computer rendering would have a problem with this, but a hand layout can solve the problem easily by simple using a sliding vanishing point.  If you locate the vanishing point for the ceiling and floor in the drawing below you will find that they don’t correspond, but are slightly shifted vertically so as to lessen the distortion.

Sometimes the client will want to see something which is useful to know, but which is not a real situation.  The color sketch below shows a private terminal at JFK airport.  It is all perfectly accurate, but the silhouette of the Manhattan skyline (just below and left of center) cannot be seen from there.  You would have to level parts of Brooklyn and Queens to have a line of sight, and even then it would be smaller.  However, for people unfamiliar with New York City the silhouette provides a useful landmark to orient themselves and the terminal.

Finally, there is the problem of glass, and how much you can see of an interior during daylight.  The answer in the real world is “not much”.  In the layout below you can see that I wished away the glass (and some of the structure) so as to see straight through the building.  In the photo of the finished building you can see into the building, but it is at dusk, when the artificial light can challenge the dying daylight. 

Viewers of an illustration will go far to believe an interesting story, and will forgive much fudging to experience more of a building than is normally possible.  It is a delicate balance which becomes easier as you experience and observe the different buildings, materials and lighting.  An old artist friend once said to me, “if it’s right but looks wrong it’s wrong, and if it’s wrong but looks right, it’s right”.  My own motto is “establish the facts first, then lie and manipulate as needed.”  Or more delicately stated, “get out the old Artistic License”.