Where to learn the hand-drawn method?

[RyanSpaulding]

How does one learn how to do hand drawn arch viz work and techniques? I'm interested in learning it and don't know where to start. Any ideas?

[jackb602]

For the rules of perspective drawing, Basic Perspective and Creative Perspective, both by Robert Gill, are very thorough and clear.

[William Alexander]

Architecural Graphics Frank Ching

 

 

All time classic and architecurally many consider a must have. Touches on Technical, freehand, medias, in depth perspectives, graphic values-communication. Great reference for the 'Line' and 'Value' part of illustration

[mskin]

chings books are great, but do they actually talk about the technical aspects of setting up a 3 point perspective? they mey, i just dont recall...

 

google "3 point perspective" and variations of that and you may get a basic understanding of how to set one up.

 

how about a technical drawing class at a local junior college?

[William Alexander]

The book has been my singular source of info and recall on perspective since college. One, two & three piont, full blown technical prspectives, diagonals and circles, reflections & perspective in sections are all covered and explained.

[Adehus]

Beyond the excellent books mentioned, I'd recommend seeking out someone who hand draws well. Seeing how a good illustrator develops a drawing can explain a lot, and is often inspiring.

 

Regarding perspective- while it's important to understand how it works, my experiences have led me to believe that perspective generation 'from scratch' is just about dead (at least from the POV of an efficient production pipeline). I've had the opportunity to work with a good number of decent hand illustrators, and they all work from a 3d CG model underlay (printout) now, instead of generating perspectives from scratch.

[Adehus]

I haven't used this guy's resources or studied under him, but a couple of illustrators I've worked with have, and they seem to hold him in high esteem. So, fwiw:

 

http://www.jdorr.com/

[Ernest Burden III]

Regarding perspective- while it's important to understand how it works, my experiences have led me to believe that perspective generation 'from scratch' is just about dead.

 

There is still a lot to be learned from setting up a perspective mechanically, but I agree that doing so is fairly pointless with all the 3D we have. The last rendering I did the perspective layout by pins and 48" straight-edges was in 1987. In a way its a pity, I was a pretty damned good layout artist. Just when I got really good, along came 3D CAD and I knew it was the better way.

 

By the way, one of the lessons of doing a perspective by hand is to avoid 3-pointers at all costs. Almost no rendering really needs to be 3-point and its just so much more complicated that you shouldn't even bother. Hence, the rich historical record of our field is almost exclusively 2-point works. Its great that computers have opened up the possibilities, but be mindful of tradition and only deviate when it adds value, not just because you can. As good as I was at mechanical layout, I can't even remember how to do 3-point.

 

Having said all that, I'm not sure the original question is even really about the layout. It may be more about drawing techniques, painting. I was waiting for that to be clarified.

 

Anything by Francis Ching is an invaluable treasure.

 

My father's book on rendering "Architectural Deliniation" is a good collection of techniques and approaches. In it he leads the industry (circa 1971) into a new way to prepare layouts (photography), then later I took that and went in another new direction with CAD layouts. I wasn't the first to do so, but certainly one of the first. Either way, the point is that the layout is just a step along the way, the final piece of art is what really matters.