Sketching to quickly communicate concepts

We do a lot of sketching during our first on-site meetings with clients. The process is to listen to what they want, ask questions to learn about their lifestyle and evaluate site conditions. Once we have ideas, we sketch them quickly and roughly to show what can happen.

These images were taken from sketch consults, representing the progression of quick thumbnail to more fleshed-out concept. Sometimes smaller projects get modeled on the computer to quickly produce multiple views in perspective. Sometimes things remain very rough, just to illustrate and evaluate an idea, get feedback and continue concept development.

Some of these projects replaced lawn with usable spaces and water conserving plants, so it was important to show how removing lawns can make for better curb appeal and more interesting front yards.

As you can see, it’s not a question of hand drawing vs computer imaging. The two processes overlap into a seamless workflow that uses all conceptual images to produce and illustrate a design idea.

Please click on the images to view the presentation…

Note the numbers 0 and 40. These are used to establish the scale when the image is imported into a CAD program.

This is a quickie sketch done on site to communicate the design idea to the client.

This view came from scanning the plan, scaling it and adding 3D elements. It’s the same design as the axonometric view, only more accurate.

Note the bar scale on the left, allowing the sketch to be transferred to the CAD system and scaled.

Sketching this thumbnail on site gave the client a rough idea of the design concepts we proposed, for immediate feedback.

This plan was simply imported into the CAD system and scaled, then presented to the client. At the conceptual stage, it’s often best to keep things looking loose and unfinished.

This sketch accompanied the quick concept plan to present a rough concept.

The man in the drawing is looking at a proposed sculpture backed by a piece of corten steel. This drawing focused on presenting the sculpture in its proposed location for further evaluation.

This view shows the proposed sculpture with a corten steel plate to separate it from the landscape. Everything was modeled in 3D, traced by hand, then output to an illustration program for coloring for a rough look that’s still accurate.

Sometimes you want an accurate perspective, but not with a computer generated look. The computer drew rough lines, produced the base image in black and white. The next step was to create the illustration by adding color and textures.

Tracing a site photo and adding proposed design elements works well if you took a photo from the exact position you want.