Have you as an interior designer, architect or architectural color consultant like me ever had to explain your vision to clients? Have you tried to sell a concept or project and couldn’t quite describe it? Have your architectural plans and 3-D digital renderings fallen flat with clients? Do the digital results seem too rigid, sterile and lifeless? Enter the world of hand rendered architectural illustration, my friends.

I recently made a decision to add this service to the LFB Color Consulting business model because of the need for color accuracy in my projects. When I’m testing colors and color placement, it’s essential for me to have a preview of how these colors look with one another, and here’s where the digital world falls short.

It is effectively impossible to 100% achieve color accuracy in a 3-d digital rendering. Compounding the difficulty is that color shifts in appearance based on differing computer or smart phone screens. Computers are all color calibrated differently, so there there is no way to guarantee color accuracy and uniform color communication across all digital platforms.

Color accuracy is essential to my work. Color is literally ALL I do, so hand rendering has an essential place in my world—especially on exterior projects!

I was looking for a way to meld my skills of travel/art illustration and color specification into a career, and here hand rendered architectural illustrating almost fell into my lap.

That’s how the good LORD works if you ask me! Through Instagram, I found a certified architectural illustrator and instructor named Shannin Williams. So far I’ve purchased about three of her online courses or workshops and am set to begin this summer. By all means, please visit her here to see the vivid, lively illustrations that Shannin creates entirely by hand! This is what I’m training to do and already have begun in some novice yet effective ways.

As I was saying, my clients want to see these color ideas come to life, and what better way to show them than to illustrate them on paper. Do clients care about perfection in the drawings? NO. They want to see how the colors, materials, and finishes will marry and where adjustments may need to be made. We need an accurate visualizer tool, and my trusty left artistic hand is here to now provide it.

Hand rendered illustrations are now an integral part of my business, and this service is a complement to all of the other full service, consultative tools I use for accurate color, materials and finishes specification.

Stay tuned for more of my sketches. You know I’ll be showing you the good, bad and ugly of it in the spirit of transparency.

Until next time, stay colorful!

Your color friend Lauren