Landscape Renderings (Part I)

Hey Everyone,

Today is a gorgeous, but nippy day in Atlanta. Even though it's cold and the official day of Spring has come and gone, I'm still glad the sun is out. During the fall season, I took a little time out of my schedule to focus on improving some of my rendering techniques. For those of you who aren't familiar with what a rendering is, let me define it according to Wikipedia.

Rendering: in visual art and technical drawing means the process of formulating, adding color, shading, and texturing of an image.

This is the one part of my career that I love the most. Not only do you have to be creative, but you can add color, shading and texture to a plan drawing to make it come to life. The way I like to do this is by using markers, color pencils and a touch of photoshop. I usually present these rendering to clients as a concept plan to give them an idea of what I'm thinking. Once the client let me know that they like the concept then we move forward into preliminary design. I will talk more about that on a different blog. Anyway, below are a couple of concept renderings for a couple clients. Enjoy...Until next time.

Courtyard Concept Rendering: Markers and Color Pencil

Plaza Concept Rendering: Markers, Color pencil and Photoshop on AutoCad Aerial photo.

What's the name of that beautiful tree?!?!

spring has official sprung as of March 20th. Now, that the days are longer and the sun is shining I've been taking long walks and getting back to running outside. Before you know it the yellow dust monster will be here, better known as pollen. On my walks through my favorite park, I ran across this beautiful magnolia tree...Pink Star Magnolia to be exact. It's white and pink flower is very beautiful and makes this tree stand out.

 

This small low-branched tree has large saucer-shaped flowers. Early-spring blossoms are pinkish-purple outside, white inside. Medium fast-growing, good pollution tolerance. Likes moist, deep, acid soil and full sun. Grows to 20' to 30', 25' spread. Great tree to be planted by itself as a show piece...see picture below.

 

Common name: Magnolia Saucer

Botanical name: Magnolia x soulangeana

 

 

Go get out and enjoy the sun until next time.

 

 

 

 Pink Saucer Magnolia-Centennial Park

 

 

Saucer Magnolia flower

Spring is coming...Spring is coming....

It's been awhile since I've blogged about any of my landscape fetishes. Well, I'm back and going to do better. First up...14 more days until spring. That's right March 20th is the first day of spring. If your anything like me, your tired of the cold, wind and rain. Let's not even mention the snow storms that we've had here in Atlanta. I could care less to see anymore snow for the rest of my life, but I digress. As I get up in the morning and take my dog for a walk, I look up at the trees and see the Red Maples are starting to bloom. All I can do is smile because those red blooms are giving me life. Yes, you read that right.. giving me life in knowing that the sun will be out and stay out...hopefully. Mother nature is a little bipolar, but at least she's giving us 65-70 degrees on the weekends. As we gear up to spring forward, I realized that my future blogs will be dedicated to color...color renderings that is. I need to get back to what made me fall in love with this profession. called landscape architecture. I love transforming landscape designs into creative spaces through color renderings. So be on the look out...until then embrace this last bit of winter because spring is definitely coming :-).