What Does an Architectural Illustrator Do?
An architectural illustrator renders the designs from which architects and clients can better visualize architectural projects. Architectural illustrators communicate the architect's ideas to clients and is well-versed in all aspects of design and composition. With the emergence of 3-D animation and technology, the world of architectural illustration has grown more exciting, attracting visual artists worldwide into this field of architecture.
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Significance
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An architectural illustrator performs the important task of visualizing the architect's ideas for a design project. An illustrator not only sketches the imagery, but also accurately renders a composition that highlights the scope, scale, size and dimensions of these projects. The architectural illustrator is, in many ways, like a storyboard artist: he or she determines not only what the project should look like but provide information about materials to be used before construction begins. He or she is the first link between an abstract idea and a fully rendered project.
Function
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Architectural illustration is a form of communication. Architects are commissioned by clients, owners, committees, customers and the general public to build architectural projects, from residential homes to commercial buildings or renovation projects. Since the architect is working with design ideas that are largely collaborative, it's important for him or her to articulate those ideas to his or her clients. Architectural illustrators provide an important tool to open up streams of communication between architect and client, and reduce misunderstandings.
Features
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Architectural illustrators do more than simply provide sketches of interior residential homes, commercial buildings, or renovation projects. They also include the shape and scale of the architectural designs. Other designs, such as shade, shadow, lighting compositions, floor designs, interior and exterior compositions, hue, saturation, value, color palette, are also significant features in an architectural design. Architectural illustrators must be well-informed of these varying architectural designs in order to be completely accurate in his or her renderings.
Types
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In the past, architectural illustrators were limited to 2-D artistic renderings. Now, not only do illustrators use 2-D artistic renderings, they also use 3-D models, employing state-of-the-art digital and computer software that create life-like and interactive renditions of the architect's design ideas. When illustrators use 2-D conventions, they are more likely to use watercolors and ink pen drawings to accurately portray architectural designs. Before they send the illustrations to clients, illustrators will frame or matte them or use high-resolution scans.
Benefits
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The benefits of becoming an architectural illustrator are manifold. The most obvious is that architectural illustrators, whether for a firm or through freelance, can make a steady living off their artistic skills. Because of the many ways in which these designs can be rendered, architectural illustration also provides artists the opportunity to work in a variety of mediums. Illustrators, working closely with architects and clients, is able to work in an collaborative environment, one in which the illustrator works from a variety of ideas.
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