LIGHT DEMONSTRATION – HERALD SQUARE

Being both an architect and an architectural illustrator, I have always been fascinated by the play of light on different materials. 

The mainly stone churches of Europe create a nice and simple pattern of shade and shadow.

The modern technology of reflective glass is nearly as simple: reflectivity and transparency combine to describe the building form.

The Beaux Art “palette” of stone and punched windows is an old variation on stone and glass.

In my own playing with “landmarks” along Broadway, NYC, I often used a mix of stone and glass. For my proposal on the block south of Greeley Square Park (32^nd Street and Broadway) I used large areas of reflective glass set into a frame of stone.

Since the building would be “facing” north toward the adjacent park, direct sun would have little chance to show off a sculpted stone façade. See Full Length Portraits & Tall Buildings.

By using reflective glass facing north, you can make the mirrored play of the northern sky contrast with the southern sky behind the building. The horizontal pattern of the southern sky would also make a nice contrast with the vertical lines of the stone framing. The finished painting above was featured on a 1994 calendar of architectural art.

At the north end of the same elongated space formed by the intersection of 6^th Avenue and Broadway is Herald Square, fronting on 35^th Street. The square was named for the adjacent headquarters building of the New York Herald newspaper, designed by Stanford White in 1908, and demolished in 1921. 

Years after painting the Greeley Block, I dropped a computer rendering of the same design onto the Herald Square site. Looking at the result made me imagine a more sculptural design along the lines of White’s eclectic 1908 style. It would give me a chance to explore a variety of light conditions via computer renderings. This was done 10 years ago, in 2011. Computer renderings were cheap and ubiquitous, but still did not have the touch of artistic magic that I have always looked for.

I modeled the idea in AutoCAD and established views from the south, as seen in the wireframes above.

Then, for the fun of it, rendered it in Accurender and pasted it into a photo of the site in Photoshop.

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So now that we have a design and a site, let me bring on the “Light Taxonomy” from my previous post. I will not use Spot Lighting or Confetti Lighting, as they are more specialized than I want here.

1.     Beaux Art

2.     Frontal

3.     Dusk

4.     Saarinen

5.     Ambient

6.     Ferriss

I now spent numerous photo sessions in Herald Square shooting the site under different light/atmosphere conditions and different times of the day. I eventually had reasonable photos of the site under all 6 light conditions.

Next, I created 6 renderings of the computer model from the same viewpoint, each differing only by the light type and corresponding atmosphere. Each rendering (via Accurender) took into account light angle, time of day, sky, sun and context color, reflected view, etc. 

Using Photoshop I pasted the building rendering into the corresponding photo, setting it behind the trees in the square itself.

Finally, I rendered (on my computer tablet) the final Photoshop’d image to make it more unified in terms of value, color and composition. If I was actually producing a finished rendering, I would take this “sketch” rendering as the general goal for the final image.

Below you will find each view’s light direction, rendered building, site paste-up and “sketch” rendering.

BEAUX ART

FRONTAL

 

DUSK

 

SAARINEN

 

AMBIENT

 

FERRISS

 

At this point, having a number of interesting possibilities, I would have gone on and painted a large, detailed illustration with plans and elevations. I did not. Life got in the way, and I am on to other projects. 
However, I hope the reader gets some ideas and inspiration from the exercise.


Addendum: the idea for a light taxonomy came from John Hedgecoe's The Photographer's Handbook, 2nd Ed. The 8 photos taken from dawn to dusk show an amazing range of color and light.

FOCUS DEMONSTRATION

When you paint or draw an object, you can direct the viewer’s eye to whatever part of the object you want. The building owner may have asked you to highlight one aspect of the project, or the building may have several owners/investors with different goals.

Focus may not matter much when the object is compact, like a face or a small house, but it becomes important when illustrating a sprawling object, such as a long, low building or a tall, thin building. The following illustration of a glass and steel skyscraper is a good example of the problems and opportunities of focus. 

Throughout the process, focus was considered. 

The building was to be located in downtown Tampa, so most of its sides would be closely blocked by other, existing buildings. 

I tried several sketches, including the two above. The aerial view seemed to lose the new building in the crowd of existing buildings. The second view offered a wider range of ways to handle light without obscuring the building entirely. 

So I tried a couple of extra sketches, first a dark building on light background, and second a light building on dark background. Neither sketch was meant to suggest a final solution.

Next I built a computer model, including surrounding buildings and cars. On a print of the view, I added trees and people, and scanned the result.

Just to check my earlier sketches, I repeated my dark-on-light sketch, then added a study that placed a middle-value building between dark foreground buildings and grey background buildings. These are all rather pedestrian; in fact, at this point I was disappointed with the possibilities.

However, the visual properties of glass and steel provide opportunities to play with light and atmosphere and, of course, focus.

The four pastel sketches above try out lighting schemes that shift the focus on the building. At the top is a fairly standard approach emphasizing the building’s vertical unity, while the other three sketches focus on the top, the bottom, and both top and bottom. Any one of these sketches might lead to an interesting rendering, but in the end I just had to develop the last one. The ethereal idea of emphasizing the top and bottom of the building, while “losing” the middle of the shaft, has always fascinated me.

Here is the pastel color study developing that idea. I decided on a scenario after sundown, with artificial lighting providing most of the effect. Therefore you can see a muted reflection of the evening sky in the reflective glass of the top half of the building, and a warm glow of the street lighting at the base. Meanwhile, the steel mullions and interior walls and ceiling reflect the building’s floodlighting at the top and bottom, and interior lighting scatters a counterpoint up the entire shaft.

I felt confident enough in that sketch to go straight to final art. I figured I could do it best in Photoshop, since it has many layers and masks and is adjustable in a range of ways.

I took the final line drawing, which would provide plenty of detail, and began rendering each obvious area on a separate layer. 

First, the building’s vision and spandrel panels (both reflective).

Add the vertical stainless-steel ribs.

And finally, the building’s interior lighting at various floor levels.

Next, the basic blocks of the distant surrounding buildings are colored in various cool shades.

And the overcast sky.

The foreground context buildings take shape.

Finish covering the board with the streets, sidewalks and nearby park.

Bring the surrounding buildings up to reality with interior lighting and lighted signage.

At this point I had a passable rendering: realistic, accurate and dramatic. But hey, this was for my own enjoyment, and I had unlimited time. So I printed out that last image and started working it over in pastel. I changed the sky so the top of the building was obscured by the low clouds. I pushed all the far buildings into a uniform middle value. And I added to and loosened up the street-level light.

I thought the pastel was an improvement in overall impact and abstract composition. The focus was also stronger, although there was now a secondary focus of the light blue sky near the horizon.

So, finally, I pushed into the final in Photoshop. The result was more crisp and less strident but did have a stronger contrast at top and bottom, compared to the pastel. The center of the rendering became more homogeneous, with less contrast between the existing buildings and the sky. Squinting, I see a warm slash at the bottom of the image and a cool cloud at the top. At first glance you might not be sure what you are looking at, but on closer inspection the building comes clear.

...and there is plenty of interesting detail to draw you even closer.

I have addressed focus in a number of blog posts, but I’m going to round up a batch of examples soon.