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.

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.

Hugh Hardy

I have been quite busy from the beginning of the year, and so have only now felt able to acknowledge the death of my mentor and friend, Hugh Hardy, on March 17.

The first time I saw Hugh was at a building where his company was vacating a floor, and I was involved in the renovation of that same floor for a new tenant. I found myself in the elevator with him, and was so flustered at being alone with a longtime architectural hero that I stood there tongue-tied. 

That was in 1986. Three years later I had gained some experience doing perspectives for offices where I worked, and I began working as a freelance architectural renderer. Late in 1991 I got a call asking if I had time to work on the Vancouver Library competition. That competition was won by Moshe Safdie, but Hugh liked my work and we got along easily.

I did rendering work for Hugh, as well as his partner Malcolm Holzman, for the next ten years. Although his projects were usually performing arts venues, he was quite capable of designing more prosaic buildings. 

Anyway… 

There are obituaries out there that outline his career better than I can. The following are, instead, a few personal observations.

Hugh was a bright and optimistic man. He always seemed to have a mischievous smile on his face. He was witty, and was always a pleasure to talk to. His intelligence was obvious, but he wore it lightly. He was comfortable with his genius. 

He was one of the few architects I worked for who would step back and evaluate a painting as a whole. He understood the details of a project but knew that the overall impact of a rendering was its ability to seduce from across the room. 

He was an artist-architect though not a petty diva. He designed with the human experience in mind. He did not design personal monuments. He understood the plastic arts yet was sensitive to the function and context of a successful building.

I believe he saw humans as clearly as anyone can but was not depressed or angered by the tragedy of our flawed character. He accepted life’s joys and sadnesses good-naturedly. He combined the smile of reason with the smile of irony.

He was a good man. He will be missed.

Hand & CAD - The Wireframe Years - 13

Tokyo International Forum Finals (F)

This is my last post on the final phase presentation for the Tokyo International Forum.

The following images are views that were dropped from the final presentation. They all deal with the Glass Hall or the Plaza, so there was no real lose in understanding from dropping them.

The Glass Hall roof was perhaps the most distinctive feature of the entire design. It was essentially a huge canoe shaped structure, that was rigid enough to “hang” the glass “curtain”. Part of an earthquake-safe structure, it also was a beautiful sculptural form.

Several ideas were explored as the design developed, as shown above.

Above, photos of the resulting form at night.

We tried out views from the bridges over the plaza.

 

 

 

This idea was dropped fairly quickly when it was realized that we would be largely looking at the tops of trees.

A photo of the plaza from the north end. I found few photos from the bridges over the plaza, and, as we expected, they showed more trees than architecture.

We also tried out quite a number of views from the long ramp built into the curved glass wall.

 

 

These images were complex, and needed to be printed and evaluated quickly, so they were not done with the excessively slow hidden line processing.

 

 

 

I drew the major edges on the 8 x 10 print by hand to help us imagine the eventual look.

 

 

Although several of these views were promising, we realized that other views were better at revealing the entire space.

Following are more photos of the existing structure.

 

 

They are either shot toward the ramp, or from the curving ramp walkway itself.

 

 

 

 Altogether, an amazing urban space.

Unless I run across a project that I have forgotten, this is the last “Wireframe & Hand Design Process” post. Artistically they are disappointing, but historically they will be quite interesting to reread.

Is there a “moral” to this story? Well… it might be that computers are merely tools. And that without the human touch they lack the…

Human touch?

Yah, I know, old news. But it is worth keeping in mind as you learn how to use new technologies. Anyway, the story goes on with better and better rendering programs, and I’ll get to that eventually.