Painting Light: Exterior Glass
Not everyone has the capabilities to render huge models with a ton of lights. I am one of those people where more times than not I have to manually add light to my illustrations because I don't have the computing power. At first, this method can seem tedious....
Digital Quilling
I came across the concept of "quilling" a few weeks back and instantly began thinking how could I translate this digitally to generate a unique architectural illustration for marketing or portfolio purposes. The style had a great look to it and I knew that...
Site Updates 2013
With close to 180,000 visitors a month, this site has seen a lot of growth in the past few years. Because of this growth, there were a couple of features and updates that have needed some attention to help improve navigation and accessibility. I'm constantly...
Urban Abstract Illustration
The past week was a busy one at the office, hence I needed to play catch-up with a lot of non-website related things this weekend. I did find time to put together this illustration of the urban tower model as seen in the past few posts. The urban model lends...
Frosted Glass (Video)
I have been using this technique to create frosted glass for as long as I can remember. The workflow is incredibly simple. Most rendering programs can generate frosted glass, but the setup can often be tricky. In the case of Kerkythea, these settings...
Urban Night Illustration
I've been wanting to do this illustration ever since I first built the Sketchup model a month ago. A couple of areas that I focused on was the semi-transparent glass in the tower and activating the streets down below. I set up the model last night and let it render in...
Sketchup Timelapse
I thought it would be interesting to put together a timelapse video showing the basics on how I built the urban tower seen in the past few posts. A couple of things to note about this video is that I didn't spend a lot of the time with the finer details such as...
Winter Special: Part 2
Those of you who have followed my site for a while may remember that I created a winter scene post last year right around this this time describing how to turn any rendering into a snow scene. It was one of the few snow scenes that I had ever created. Since...
Urban Model In Progress
I have been spending my free time lately designing and building a new Sketchup model located in a dense urban environment. I thought it would be interesting to do a quick post on the progress of the model before I go into illustrating it. It is probably...
NYC Photography
I have been in New York the past few weekends just to get a little change of scenery and to spend some much needed time with family. The posts have been a little light lately but I hope to get back into the groove here soon. Until then, I thought I would fill...
InDesign: Why Use It?
I never really used Indesign much in school. However, we use it on a daily basis in the office. Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have implemented it more back in school. Indesign is another Adobe product that serves as a powerful layout tool. The program...
Adding Depth Via Fog
I thought I would pull another move from the Bob Ross play book. He was always great at creating depth in his paintings by saturating and darkening the elements that were closest to the viewer and then lightening the hills and mountains further off in the distance....
Exterior Elevation: Shadow Tweaking
I have posted in the past on how to create interior elevations/sections by only using Photoshop, but I never posted on exterior elevations. The workflow that I use for exterior elevations really isn't much different than the workflow that I use for interior...
Exploded Axon
I have always been intrigued by exploded axonometric illustrations. They add a kinetic aspect to what is typically very stagnate fixed objects. Even more though, I like how a successful exploded axon depends on a clear understanding of all...
Hardware
I spent this past week and weekend cramming for the LEED GA exam and luckily was able to pass it and put it behind me. Because of that, I wasn't able to get much work done for the blog. However, I have been getting a lot of questions asking what kind of...