Time and patience
I originally trained as an architect and went on to build a career as an industrial designer. But after many years, I've returned to my first love – drawing beautiful buildings.
I now live in the Unesco-heritage city of Bath in the UK, surrounded by classical Georgian buildings. Most of the building here were built from Bath stone. The light, honey-coloured limestone produces a fantastic array of colours – from warm earthy tones, through cool blue-greys and moss-laden greens.
I've attempted to capture these colours using traditional hand ground Chinese inks and watercolour.
And so I hope, that when you view my work, you'll see these buildings as I do: Worn and weathered over the years, but glorious in their design and structure…
Each piece can be reproduced in a variety of sizes to fit any interior or design scheme.
I also am happy to work to commission for specific briefs and colour palettes.
You can read more about what I'm working on in my blog.
Please take a look at my work and let me know what you think!
Anton
How I go about making my renderings…
My methods are slow and detailed, often quite meditative as one wash after
another builds up depth.
A drawing usually takes at least a month or so to complete, apart from the
research that goes into getting it on the drawing board.
Some buildings are frustratingly short of detailed information, but often with
the help of some good photographs and a couple on site measurements I get
as accurate a drawing as possible..
Each drawing is created using Chinese Ink or watercolours.
I use only the highest quality 100% cotton Watercolour paper. Stretching the
paper takes some time, as each piece needs to be soaked, then taped, while
wet, to my own hand-crafted oversized drawing boards.
Once dry, it stretches to a tensioned, flat surface with a high-quality grain –
perfect for the highly detailed architectural drawing that I'll start to work on.
Most of them are large Imperial size sheets, some as wide as two metres.
The building is then carefully draughted in pencil.
My years as a practising architect definitely come into play during this stage, and I re-draw each building as accurately as I can using the architect's own dimensions.
In many cases, this involves searching through archives, out-of-print books and dusty old records to discover original building plans. Once I have these I can produce a scale drawing that is as faithful to the original intention of the architect as I can manage.
Once the building is drawn, I start laying washes and slowly the building appears — like a photograph developing in a darkroom, gradually the texture and colours reveal themselves.
As in the Beaux Arts renderings of decades ago, I cast the shadows carefully and pay attention to the nuances of the back shadows and lights, and with the shadows and shades, the building jumps into life. Even though these are solid structures, I hope to achieve a transparency in the rendering.
The modelling becomes clear and the architect's intentions reveal themselves.
Once I feel the rendering is ready, and unfortunately not all of them make it to this stage, it is then professionally photographed for reproduction — they are always too large to fit on even the largest flat-bed scanner. I work with a Bristol Fine Art Printing Studio who take as much care over the details of printing as I do in rendering it.
So whether you are interested in a large Limited Edition or a small A4, the quality is assured.
I never use drop shipping and each print I send out will have been checked by me.
Please contact me if you are interested in commissioning a new drawing.
Behind the scenes…
