The Birth of a Rendering

I was hired to do a rendering (That is design-speak for drawing and coloring.) the plans for the proposed community garden in our town. I was a bit nervous about taking the job since I am an Interior Designer, not a Landscape Designer. Luckily I didn't actually have to design anything- just draw it and make it look pretty. That I can do.

I thought it would be fun to post the process of how a drawing comes to be.

The is the penciled drawing that I did to scale. All the components that will be rendered will be in the drawing. This drawing took about 5 hours to do.

Now the fun part starts. I begin the coloring by using base colors and then work my way up to darker ones. It is a subtle way to add depth.

You can see in the raised garden beds I am using a total of 3 colors to give the illusion that the beds are three dimensional. The grass wouldn't get lighter in real life, but by making the darkest grass towards the gazebo, and the lightest grass towards the viewer, it a) draws the eye in and b) gives the illusion of a light source.

In the bottom right quadrant I have added the ground cover around the flower beds. It represents mulch. Also, you can see that the roof of the gazebo has been shaded and details added.

Shadows have been added to help with the 3-d illusion. And I have added some plant life to the garden beds.

Here is the final.

There is a giant chess board in the upper right hand corner, playground equipment, grills and picnic tables, pergolas (bottom corners), and a water feature below the gazebo.

And for the record, this was only slightly less painful then the births of my other children.