Rendering

When I was out at the IP I met a guy named Cory Roberts. I had actually just missed him in Almonte the previous year, where he took a woodworking course immediately before me at the Rosewood Studio. A designer from Ontario, Cory was taking a week long course at the IP school while I was a resident there. Cory works for some big branding firm that designs things like packaging for Liptons and Frito Lays and what not. He's a big wig with a corner office and in his executive bathroom he urinates into a waterfall that cascades down a wall of pure cubic zirconia. He's very rich too, I think he actually owns the color blue.

Anyways, he brought with him a scrapbook with literally hundreds of furniture designs. Some were pencil sketches, some were marker renderings. We all drooled over his ability to illustrate his ideas, which seemed endless. In a daring armed robbery I stole the drawing below. I know he won't mind me posting it here because he's a whore for attention, and deathly afraid of me.



One of the classes I have in my Architecture program is Presentation, where we learn various rendering techniques. Next year the focus is almost entirely digital but in the first year it's all pencil crayons and markers. Coloring class! It's kinda fun. This past week has been reading week and I had the opportunity to take an illustration workshop from the great Mike Lin, a highly sought after illustrator and author. He holds regular workshops at his studio in San Francisco but a few times a year he travels to various schools to hold two day classes. It was a good experience and made me want to pony up the two grand to take his week long workshop in Cali.

One of the first things he does is give everyone a line drawing of a building and gives you five minutes to render it. First in pencil crayon then in marker. Here's mine:




Pretty kindergarten-esque hey? There were actually some in the class that were much worse! There was a bit of panic involved in these 'pre-test' as Mike doesn't tell you he's going to do it, he just says 'you have 5 minutes to render this, GO!'. And then when everyone is mortified at what pathetic artists they are, Mike wanders around and shows the entire class the worst, pointing out how shitty everyone's drawings are. And then the afternoon of the second day you do a 'post-test' where you apply the techniques he taught. I wonder if anyone else is posting their before pictures on their blogs? Or if they're burning them?

After:



I'm looking forward to practicing and applying these techniques to architectural, interior, and furniture design. One day maybe I'll get to piss on fake diamonds too!