I’m looking for landscape architects or designers who use watercolor in their master plans
I’m having a problem finding landscape architects and designers who use watercolor in their plans. I’ve used several search engines and AIs. The problem seems to be twofold: the word watercolor in my search brings up results that use digital watercolor, and the word landscape brings up artists of landscapes. I’m looking for example work not just names of artists. I’m currently studying landscape design and am enjoying hand rendering plans. A friend gave me some watercolors to try after I complained about not really liking colored pencil or markers. My watercolor rendered plans look way better, but I don’t really know what I’m doing or what I’m striving for because I can’t find a lot of examples. Can anyone help me out? I thought I was good at search, but this has me rethinking that assumption :(
(Didn’t know what group to put this in)
I've got a couple specific examples, but not any recurring names:
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In terms of a search engine, check out same.energy. I fed it one of the pics from above and it came back with quite a few watercolor renderings.
/offtopic
Holy cow, same.energy is incredible. I appreciate that it links to where it gets each image. How is it so fast?
The about page notes that it's their own algorithm, but it's something close to CLIP. At a guess: they're using ML to make a fingerprint (jargon: a vector embedding of the image) of each picture they process.
As an analogy, think of it like organizing all their images in a gigantic art gallery, where everything is grouped by similarity. All the watercolours are in one wing, and all the portraits are in another. Within each group there's also sorting: you've got frontal portraits in one section, and side in another, and etc. The "fingerprint" is the physical coordinate in the building: the floor, and the subsection each painting was hung in. The trick is that, if you have a way to rapidly figure out where your target image is (in this analogy, knowing where to look for it in the gallery), you already know that there are tonnes of similar images hung up right beside it.
Hopefully that helps 😅
That definitely does, great explanation! The piece I overlooked is that, by definition, similar images are not far from where you currently are. Which should have been obvious haha. I think I read the part about "we don't need tags or metadata, just the image" and misinterpreted it to mean that the system itself doesn't use them, when in fact that sentence refers to user input specifically.
I’ve just spent some time checking out same energy. Wow. I still can’t find what I’m looking for, but I did find a lot of examples for other things.
Thank you for looking for images for me. The images you linked are either perspective or elevation drawings which are parts of a master plan. I’m looking for plan views. I did find plan views at same energy but not watercolors. I’ll keep looking!
I’d seen a hand rendered watercolored master plan in a class once done by some dead landscape architect. It was such a work of art, but I only have an impression of what it looked like, not an actual image in my mind. I didn’t really pay it much attention ‘cause I didn’t think it would ever be something that I could do. Now I wish I’d made a note on it, so I could plug it into a search.
I'm afraid I've got no more leads, so best of luck! I hope you find what you're looking for
What you did was awesome! I’ve been having a terrible time finding visual examples of things I want to draw inspiration from. The site you linked is fabulous.
Have you considered that you are a trailblazer, and you are not finding examples because there aren't any out there?
A lot of creative work is subjective, and perhaps instead of trying to find examples of what to emulate, the answer is to just continue to build on what you have as it evolves into your unique style.
If you are comfortable sharing your work, I would like to think that (1) a lot of people will like it as is, but also, (2) you will find people who can give you feedback that can help you with things you aren't sure about.
It seems like you may be operating in a unique space, so an easier approach might be splitting up where you get input - a technical group for industry specific stuff, and artists for the creative stuff.
I have a lot of fear when I lay down ink and color. I tend to be super rigid, so much so that I’ve lost points for rigidity lol. But I start to loosen up a bit with watercolor. It’s like there’s a playfulness to water that is hard to resist. I do try to resist it though! So I guess I was looking for examples so I could start seeing what the boundaries are.
I have to present 4x each course, so I have been sharing with my classmates. They have been interested in what I’ve been doing, but neither they nor my instructor give much feedback on the actual watercolor, focusing on the technical and design aspects of the space. I have one more class in this series, and afterwards I’ve been thinking about taking drawing and watercolor classes during the summer. That’s probably where I’ll get that sort of feedback. Your comment helped me here, so the new sentence says: I will take drawing and watercolor classes this summer. Thank you.
Good luck in your journey!
And good on you for taking the classes.
The creative world is an interesting space, and I'm sure in the class you'll find both good feedback and the beginnings of a good network of creative friends.
What you want to search for is "watercolor rendered site plan". That search will return all sorts of references for you. That specific search on Pinterest returned results for me that I think you are looking for.
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2 Although this appears to be a combination of watercolor and prisma markers.
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Some other key words to describe what you're wanting:
"conceptual site plan"
"landscape concept"
"concept plan"
"rendered master plan"
Hope that helps!
Giving me new search criteria and showing me some examples of what you found is helpful! A long time ago, I blocked pinterest from my search results, you made me realize that for what I’m doing now, looking for “inspiration” and examples, pinterest could have a lot to offer. Thank you!
Have you tried your library's reference desk? I imagine it would be easier if you showed a few that weren't what your looking for and explained why.
That’s a wonderful idea. I went to the reference desk a while ago, not really having a formed idea of what I wanted. It was something like “books on landscape design.” Now that I have a clearer idea of what I’m looking for, I’ll go back to them.
Emailing them might even be better, as there is less urgency in an email which gives them more time to look and time to think.