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Traditional Art

While I was attending the Computer Graphics department at Purdue University it was known as Technical Graphics.

It focused more on providing a good traditional background in illustration and technical drawings. Once we had a firm grounding in the traditional media, we moved into doing the same in computers.

Below are a few samples of my work in traditional media.

Color House

Professor Mike Helms taught the technique he pioneered in his book "Perspective Drawing-A step-by-step Handbook" by having the class draw a house of their choosing. Traditional visual ray method, he teaches a method called the perspective plan. Perspective plan has some advantages over visual ray, which is the more traditional method for drawing houses like this - mainly it is more flexible.

We started out with a simple overhead floor plan and side views of the house. From there we drew the house on drawing vellum. Once the house drawing was complete it was transferred to cold press board using graphite paper. The house is colored in acrylic paints. One of the harder parts was getting the windows to look correct. Another challenge was all the fine lines of the balcony rail and stairs.

Once the house was done it came time do create the landscape using gouaches. I decided to try something different by putting the house in a mountainous landscape. I was trying to mimic the mountains I had seen in West Virginia.

Ink House

The ink version of the house was made shortly after the color one. We only had a day or so to complete this. I sat down and polished it off in one five hour sitting.

The house was traced on Mylar. The landscape was drawn freehand.

Tri Star Graphix

For this project we were given the choice two different fictitious companies. We were given descriptions of both companies and we designed an appropriate logo for the company we chose. My approach to this project was different from my peers. I used my AutoCAD modeling skills to model the lettering and logo. After printing it out, the logo was transferred to dark blue paper and was shaded using a combination of pastels and PrismaColor pencils to give it a metallic effect.

The background was created by dousing a cold press board with water and then applying blue and brown spray paint while water still cover the surface. It created a rather interesting effect once it dried.

Ball Valve

This is a classic example of some of the pen and ink illustrations I produced. This particular one was originally drawn in pencil in an earlier class and later traced using tech pens. The purpose of this project was to teach techniques in producing a professional line weight illustration. There were several problems that we had to solve in creating this. We were responsible for the layout, balance, flow lines, and the overall effect of the line weight rendering amongst other things. I consider this project important because it taught me effective techniques in line weight rendering.

Some of the techniques I learned doing this was later applied to the ink version of the house.