The Essential Techniques in Visual Art of Architecture Design Practice: Definition and Significance (I)

The Essential Techniques in Visual Art of Architecture Design Practice: Definition and Significance (I)

by Anqi Yang

San Francisco and Bay Area, 2017

"Architects were once noted for their ability to visualize through drawing and this set them apart from engineers or technicians"

The Duet of Gothic and Caribbean, 2016, normally, graphics and design techniques reflect on a promotion artwork for business and commercial purposes, designed and illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved 

This article will argue some of the most primary visual arts techniques applied in architecture design practice, also it will examine the significance of each technique by sample works or projects. With the development of segment markets in the architecture industry worldwide, the architectural visualization field is one of the fantastic and significant branches of the working flow of the architecture design practice, which celebrates a diversity of classical and brand new methods and techniques. 

A prevalent opinion is that all fine art is a subset of visual art, which indicates that some visual artworks do not belong to fine art. Visual arts in architectural design practice is quite important due to the dramatical exchanges and evolution of the new business model during a recent couple of years; operating branches of visual arts tools, platforms, and media, professionals, and clients in this industry communicate much more frequently and diversity than before. Here are some typical samples of visual arts application in architectural design practice and relevant fields:

-For property developers/third party agents: programming, planning, concept design/planning, branding, initial idea presentation, marketing strategy purpose, legal documentation, magazine and publicity, sale, publications
-For architecture design firms: branding purpose, projects/products general/performance demonstration, legal documentation, marketing strategy purpose, projects/products showcase, design stage/process presentation and visualization, idea delivery, competition, concept art, exhibition
-For architectural related fields and public departments: historical preservation and Academy research, documentary, civic management, publications, standards promotion
-For public general: education, publication, fine arts/applied arts composition, popularization knowledge

Fine Arts and Commercial Arts in Architectural Visualization

The purposes of the two are very different. Fine Arts are judged for their beauty, meaningfulness, everlasting spirits, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and pure architecture are considered as typical fine arts; performing, music, poetry and theater are also considered as fine arts. Fine arts works are normally respected and highly individualized. Conversely, commercial artworks include advertising, graphic design, branding, logos, and book illustrations, usually are reproduced industrial products, in contrast, fine art defines the appreciation value to permanently collection. Not all architectural visualization works in nowadays market and design market could be categorized into fine arts, meanwhile, the majority of them are repetitive manufactured based commercial artworks. As an illustration, by occupying the most advantages of digital instruments, an architecture designer is able to create a branch of high-quality rendering pages even the animations within a day, however, an architectural artist may take one week even a month to draft a single architecture visual art piece, which could be a painting, an illustration artwork, or a mixed media drawing. The obvious difference between the both is that fine arts works embrace the artist's personal mood, sense of art, touch, emotion on the work, personality, special styles and personal painting techniques, and any initial soul and original spirits relative to this single piece. Compared to fine artworks, the commercial visual artworks for architecture usually don't have enough hybrid elements and especially the designer's or artist's individual art tastes, since the draft man presents very limited human sense and personal tastes into the solo digital media-based design visualization. As a consequence, it is not easy to build a relationship between the draftsman and their digital-only-based visualization works for those audiences or readers.

Traditional Architectural Illustration/ Visual Art
Traditional illustration employees various old-school instruments and techniques to create two-dimensional visual arts covers a series of classical media, such as pastel, pen and ink, pencil, watercolor, oil, etc.

Digital/Mixed Media Illustration
Nowadays, the practice of architectural design is largely digital and informative oriented than ever. Living in the digital period, professionals are accustomed to digital architectural visualization in the architecture practice. The advantage of digital visualization is obvious: many software packages supply the real-time visualization solution for highly complex structures and architecture projects in any view, and the whole rendering process takes much less time than the traditional methods. So how about the traditional craftsman techniques application the modern period? Just imagine the "right point" when traditional media meets the latest digital rendering techniques, the result is compromise and charming. There are many examples of digital and mixed media illustration and visualization in architecture design practice and academic fields, still, designers and illustrators sometimes would like to present the mixed-media visual artworks because they would benefit from various tools and integrate their intention, conscious and unconscious into a single art piece. 

The Live-work Project for Artists, River Art District, Asheville, 2015, was designed, modeled, and illustrated by Anqi Yang, this work is occupied by BIM modeling and simulation with traditional drawing techniques. All rights reserved

Drawing and Painting

Distinguish with painting and considering it as a subcategory of visual art, drawing is created through a variety of drawing instruments marked on the two-dimensional medium, presenting the outlining and shadows. Painting is the practice of employing paint, pigment, color, or other colorful mediums to a two-dimensional solid surface.

Paraline Drawing: Isometric Drawing and Axonometric Drawing

The Principle of parallel was systemically developed by French engineer Gaspard Monge, who invented the whole techniques of descriptive geometry. Descriptive geometry is a branch of geometry that allows the representation of three-dimensional objects in two dimensions media. 

There are four basic types of axonometric projections: Oblique, Dimetric, Isometric, and Trimetric.

Axonometric Projection (drawing) is referred to as a projection as they do not have vanishing points as the conventional perspective drawing. glossary-tag Consequently, all lines on a common axis are drawn as parallel. Drawing prepared by using the projection method requires three views of the object, which tends to be more time-consuming and complex than drawing by the direct measuring method. 

There are some characters of this type of graphics technique for architectural drawing:

-The drawing is a whole design process, which requires high concentration and fully experienced for the drafters;

-One-piece paper is able to present all the plants, sections, and elevations of the same project;

-The drawing could be used as a design reference document, which presents detailed materials, structures, textures and decorations in the early design stage; All these analog materials are quite useful for later digital modeling and rendering

-The drawing itself may be promoted into a fine artwork

-More flexible and accurate than a linear perspective drawing, Dimetric and Trimetric represent the object's real dimensions on each dimension within a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.

The Axonometric Drawing of The Home for Artist, River Art District Asheville, NC, the United States. Illustrated by Anqi Yang, designed by Michael Simmons. All Rights Reserved

Axonometric Drawing of Chartres Cathedral, 2008, a study drawing for the French Gothic architectural fly wall-arch structure, sculptures, elements order, and proportion, studied and illustrated by Anqi Yang. All Rights Reserved

A Proposal of the Luxury Boutique Hotel in the Carrabine Sea Area, Axonometric projection, 2015, took around ten days to finish, Concept idea was composed by WDI architecture design department, this is one version of the concept pool which was designed and illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved. external links: 

Richard Meier Douglas house analysis, Axonometric projection, 2007, took around ten days to finish, illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved.

Freehand Linear Perspective Technique Drawing/ Painting

The early perspective technique applied in architectural drawings and paintings was found in the literature and ruins of the ancient Roman Empire, the ancient Chinese oblique perspective paintings, and Medieval artists' manuscripts in Europe. were aware of the general principle of varying the relative size of elements according to distance, but even more, than classical art was perfectly ready to override it for other reasons. Buildings were often shown obliquely according to a particular convention. The use and sophistication of attempts to convey distance increased steadily during the period, but without a basis in a systematic theory.

With the improvement of mathematics and geometrical methodology, the linear perspective technique was systematically developed by some of the most important Italian Renaissance painters and architects including Filippo Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Piero Della Francesca, and Luca Pacioli, wrote treatises on it, and incorporated it into their artworks, thus contributing to the mathematics of art. During the past twenty decades, this old-school craftsmanship has been replaced by digital modeling techniques in architectural design practice around the world.

Although it is quite simple to build a three-dimensional linear perspective platform by digital modeling method, the principle and the cultural heritage of the classic technique is very worth to be inherited by nowadays generations.

The Perspective View of a Local Single Family House, permanently collected by the property owner. compared to live sketching and photocopy painting, this work is occupied by the classical perspective drawing technique, which means the illustrator only needs to get the elevation and layout information from the online 3D map, designer, and field trip. by Anqi Yang, 2012, All rights reserved

Artist's Impression

The technique of a representation method for those objects which could not be photographed or observed. In Architectural visual arts, typically, it is applied in historical architecture or urban landscape recovery.

Live Sketching

Live sketching requires drawers to stay and observe the objects on-site, and markdown what the drawer saw and got to knew from the object in his/her own way. Unlike taking photography, on-site live sketching really needs the personal discovery of the new things from the real object in a limited time rather than from second-hand information, such as an image from the internet, or photography. Within a very limited time, the drawer needs to concentrate on the architecture, go around look around the site and the project. All these actions may help him/her find the ideal angle and position to present the image of the project. Sometimes, the drawer could explore some unknown details of this architecture. The process of the live sketching would push the drawer to build the image of the form, styles, order, and layout of the entire three-dimension mass in the heart. The whole process of live sketching is a journey of discovering and learning new things that haven't been discovered. A temple, church, sanctuary, historical heritage are the ideal projects to be sketched on-site, and the objects are not limited to architecture exterior, but also the interior of a single architecture, a detail of structure formation, the surrounding landscape, people, urban fabric or neighborhood. Live sketching is a part of survey sketching, the critical thinking sketching technique. 

A Live Sketching for a Single Family House, Wuhan, China, 2008. Quick live sketching can begin with a small size architecture. Illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved

The First Chinese Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia, the United States, 2012. Compared to real photography, illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved

Oblique Projection / Parallel Projection

Oblique projection is a type of parallel projection, which is a basic technique of parallel graphical projection used for representing a three-dimension object by producing a two-dimension drawing. Oblique projection historically was widely used in ancient Chinese painting arts.

The aim of this technique is to explore how to freehand drawing could enhance the level of understanding of the complexities of different types of architecture and structure projects. The study objects could be the urban and city fabric, town corner, landscape, the facade of buildings, structures, building performance, interiors, history and archaeology, and other relevant fields. The process of studying sketching itself is a critical analysis of the elements of architecture. Embracing digital modeling and photography, this technique is usually applied in design innovation and architectural proposal representation (1).

Concept Art

As a form of illustration, concept art has been used to present a specific initial idea of a product in the early design/programming/directing stages, and this form of art is quite popular in the entertainment industry, such as films, video games, animation, comic books, themed parks, or other media. Fine artists, industrial designers, animators, or even special effects artists may work as concept artists.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, the most famous leading themed luxury resorts and parks developer in the world, is considered as the pioneer of conceptual art practice on entertainment and resort development. As a sub-department of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Imagineering successfully has been occupied this design philosophy throughout their practice in themed products, architecture, themed parks, and urban planning. The core spirit of concept art composition is to maximize the magic world before the workflow begins, and artists and designers don't want to limit their creativity at the very beginning, applying these technique methods, they are able to set their thoughts and abilities free.

Turning back to architecture design practice, we shall ask ourselves do we really drill that deep and wide of our imagination before every project gets started? Is there something immeasurable or priceless matter getting a birth a long time before the physical matter is made? Why concept art is so popular and occupies an essential role in film, animation, game, illustration, fashion, luxury design, interactive design, industrial design, and many other relevant fields rather in the architecture design practice? Hundreds even thousands of concept artworks are created for a single piece painting for a themed interior project, a model kits model or toy, a facade of a destination/attraction building, even a sculpture and a simple iPhone mobile game app, a shortcut of a piece of video advertisement, while, how many this type of artworks are usually created for a public building even a single-family house at its early design stage? Aren't the single-family houses not designed for customized? Don't the owners demonstrate their individual tastes, culture, lifestyles, and social class value through their own properties? Aren't they considered themed design? Maybe this is the exact reason why it is unreasonable and doubtful to classify many "so-called" architecture projects into the architecture category rather than the category of architectural engineering. Besides the engineering techniques, there is something more valuable and significant for architecture design practice, and its name is ART.

Hong Kong RD&E Project, for WDI Walt Disney, concept design imagination work

Design Sketching & Creative Design Sketching

A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a finished work, is sometimes called a sketch. The term Design Sketching is originally referenced from the industrial design field, which includes the entire design process of design sketches techniques. Industrial design practice extreme concentrate on the early design idea generating and studies through the techniques of various sketches, freehand sketch, and digital modeling & rendering is equally important in this industry. Compared to architectural sketch, industrial design sketch embraces, even more, contents and techniques and occupies a more crucial role in the design practice. According to Dr. James Self and Eujin Pei's speech at the International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2015 in Australia, gave the following opinions:

"The focus on the designer as the sketcher, however, is reflected in the four taxons of explorative, persuasive, explanatory and prescriptive sketches that then see sketching through the lens of the purpose of output rather than referencing the inherent characteristics of the different sketches themselves or the stage which they are used."(3)

 The four categories of design sketching include thirteen different sketching techniques, and everyone demonstrates specific function and purpose. For instance, in the category of explanatory, there are three types of methods of presentation: scenario storyboard, info sketch, and explanation sketch. Under a sequential arts manner, the scenario storyboard sketches may illustrate the use process of the products or instruction for a new product; an info sketch is the best tool to explain the whole function and performance of a product with a diagram or database; an explanation sketch could move further than info sketch, which delivers more comprehensive information to clients, designers, public or customers.  

The illustration as Fine Arts

An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video games, and films. Illustration defines a much broader objective than architectural visual arts, suggests that anything is existing or non-existent could be marked on the two-dimensional media. A fine arts illustration work could be a piece of storytelling sequential work, a drawing of a person, sketching of an event, a painting of a landscape and nature, man-made machines, and structures.

Hybrid Drawing/ Diagram

This is not a new term for architectural professionals, while it might not be very popular to the public and some other fields. In Hybrid Drawing: Techniques by Complementary Architects and Designers, Haleh Uddin explained that the hybrid drawing integrates multimedia within one piece of drawing presentation, with diversity drawing and demonstrating media, "have become valuable artifacts beyond their information merit."(2) hybrid drawing mixes diversity types and styles of drawing or images that create and superimposes a variety of ideas, techniques or media into a new, meaningful image.

Design Proposal Technique Drawing

The proposal idea for an architectural designer might demonstrate enough depth and valuable information within one page and be finished in a very short time, and the design proposal technique drawing would be an ideal choice. Compared with digital drawing and modeling, the freehand technique drawings embrace the idea of generating a history. The early design proposal technique drawing could be used as reference materials, drafting documents, and analog information sources.

Design Proposal Drawing for Utopia: The Steel Mill in the Antarctic Ocean, ASAI AIP 29 award project, selected for global exhibition 2014-2015, designed and illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved. 

The Open Source & Transformable Mobile Prefabricated Micro House Group Solution-I, a diagram presents the relationship between occupancy and the living-work block, machinery, building components, and equipment. 

Proposal Technique Drawing for The Performance Center of SCAD, 2013, Savannah, Georgia, the United States. This drawing explores the relationship between the existing building and new construction. Design and Illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved

The Concept Elevation of the Modern Mountain Luxury Residential Project in IL, illustrated by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved

Endnotes
(1)Refer page vii, RIBA, and ARB has recognized the importance of the freehand drawing techniques for architects practice. Edwards, Brian. Understanding architecture through drawing. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008
(2)Refer the original statements on page 8, M. Saleh Uddin, Hybrid Drawing: Techniques by Complementary Architects and Designers, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1999
(3)The typical design sketches for industrial design are Idea sketch, study sketch, usability sketch, memory sketch, sketch rendering, inspiration illustration, presentation rendering, scenario& storyboard sketch, info. sketch, explanation sketch, prescriptive sketch, detail drawing, and technique illustration.
For specific definitions of each term describes above, and architecture drawing techniques with standards, please refer AIA Architectural Graphic Standards, 11th edition, Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007

Reference and further readings

Edwards, Brian. Understanding architecture through drawing. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008.
Paul Laseau, Graphic Thinking for Architects & Designers, third edition, Wiley, 2000
Nigel Cross, Engineering Design Methods: Strategies for Product Design 4th Edition, Wiley, 2008

Walt Disney Imagineering Concept Arts works

Beth Dunlop, Building a Dream: The Art of Disney Architecture, Disney Edition, 2011

All images and works © 2015-2019 by Anqi Yang. All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.