BETWEEN CONCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION

I have shown my clients Transparent Drawings, and this has only increased their enthusiasm and excitement toward the design. There is a competitive advantage to the presentation of rational and explanatory hand drawings.  And they get it.

Part of the mission of Transparent Drawing is to inspire you to find drawing approaches that work for you. Another part of the mission is to give you the confidence to show these same drawings to your clients. In my experience, if a drawing is satisfying and meaningful to you, it will also be important to your client. When you are enthusiastic about your work, then your client enjoys that enthusiasm and thereby gains confidence in you.

Pie in the sky? Possibly. Yet over the decades that I have been in this profession, there has been a rather distinct line in the sand between the conceptual sketch, and the drawing that is suitable for the client’s consumption. An overall goal in these pages is to wipe out this line in the sand. A drawing that is used simultaneously for conception and representation is very, very powerful.  When you draw between conception and representation, you are free.

Clients are impressed when they realize that you can draw analogue. There is a romantic notion to the architect who draws with a pencil or a brush. There are overtones, justified or not, of the master artist. This relationship of the ability to draw and the powers of the architect should not be minimized. The fact that you actually can draw sets you apart from most, be they architects or the general public. Yet with the continued advancement of digital methods, the people who pay us, our clients, typically do not see hand drawings. They typically do not see the first gestational sketches.  Let’s right this wrong.