Studio

During what has become a long career as a designer, I've worked in all kinds of environments under a variety of conditions. In the back of surburban shopping strip kitchen showrooms on portable drawing boards with sliding straightedges and adjustable triangles.  A cramped hallway at a formica top in a cabinet manufacturing plant. Office cubicles of architecture firms. Sitting on sawdust covered floors at construction sites. The kitchen table in an ancient stone farmhouse, heated by a coal stove or cooled by opening doors and windows. In the corner of a spare bedroom.

Since 2003, though, it has been my privilege and pleasure to do most of my work right here in a spacious studio of my own design. Back in 2002, I bought a brick and sandstone church in a quiet little borough next to a wide bend in the Susquehanna River, built in 1850 and extensively remodeled to neo-Gothic style in 1906. It was de-commissioned as a church about 25 years ago and eventually became home to a pair of artists who had big visions for the building. Fortunately for me, they didn't get far with their efforts, and I was able to buy it at a price I could afford. After remodeling the first floor to accomodate my family, I turned a slice at the front of the second story sanctuary into a studio. It now includes a small fully equipped kitchen, a Japanese bath, an atrium loft, and a walkout onto a little balcony high above the street.

The remnants of a huge pipe organ donated in 1908 by Andrew Carnegie is visible at the other end of the sanctuary, through the windows behind my computer monitor. I have a huge old refectory table that allows me to spread out my work and stacks of research material. The Good Shepherd glows down on me from the center of a triptych of 19 foot tall stained glass panels. As I begin a fresh design series for a new manufacturing client, smoking a pipe and sipping Russian Caravan tea, I know that I am truly blessed.

Still life with Lindner

I've taken my sketchbook outdoors when it's been much more cold and hostile than today's 23 or so degrees fahrenheit, but with only a brief interval at my disposal between too many Sunday errands, the appeal of sitting on a folding stool in the snow escaped me. A quick drawing in the relative warmth of the studio seemed a better choice.

still life with Lindner and teapot, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4, Derwent Inktense pencils

concept and prototype rendering

In my work as a designer, I use the computer as a virtual prototype shop. I develop concepts and usually present projects with hand drawings. The two sets of skills are complementary but not really interchangeable. They accomplish different things.

showroom concept sketch

When I show drawings of spaces to clients, I usually use hand drawings. They are camera accurate in their general proportions because with drawings like the ones shown here, I first create a model in AutoCAD with enough detail to allow me to interpolate and extrapolate what I want to show. It's impossible to convincingly imply detail in a computer rendering - it's either there or it isn't. A hand rendering is evocative. It also, for most clients, feels much more personal. And it is.

TV screen raised

sideboard concept sketch

Getting down to exactly what I intend to see built, though, full computer modeling and rendering become essential. The precise profiles, and the relationship of parts to the whole, need the proof of prototyping. While it can be cumbersome, it's much more time and cost effective than actual prototyping in real materials.

design development prototype

Having developed a concept in sketch then digital form, I return here to a quick hand drawing to illustrate how the design might work in the showroom space.

showroom concept sketch

Using these two techniques, each to accomplish different goals, helps clients to feel and visualize what they need in order to feel confident and enthusiastic about ordering something that doesn't yet exist.

morning warm up

Outside the thick walls of my house, the temperature this morning is around 15 degrees fahrenheit, but I'll be here in the relative warmth of the studio most of the day, wearing down pencils. I haven't done a single drawing from life in a month. It's amazing how quickly one can get out of practice, and starting again, at least for me, is hard. But here is a start, just the articles next to the open spot on my worktable where most of today's work will be concentrated.

I had to take Gabe to school before I could get very far, and now after coming back in from the cold to pick it up again where I left off, I'm feeling the urgency to turn my attention to the activities that pay the bills, so I don't know if or when I'll finish this sketch. Oh, and for you pipe fans, that's a Michael Lindner sandblasted author.

morning worktable, 8 1/4 x 11 1/2, 2B graphite and Prismacolor pencils

kitchen renderings in progress

A pair of views of an over the top English Baroque style kitchen being developed by one of my clients, a Philadelphia area kitchen designer named Kelley Brill, for a baronial residence in Florida. This is an example of taking someone else's design (in this case twice removed) and making it look good in a presentation drawing. It took much more painstaking 3D drawing in AutoCAD than usual to obtain the model output over which these were hand drawn. Ironically, to create an energetic and impressionistic artist's interpretation of the room, much of that detail is only suggested in the final graphite pencil drawings, and will be further obscured when I apply color and tone to complete the renderings. But to make them convincing, I have to see everything that's there before I decide what to focus on, what to suggest, and what to leave out of the hand rendering.

graphite base drawing, view 1

graphite base drawing, view 2

  birdseye screen shot of the AutoCAD modelThe renderings are being created so that the homeowner will be able to visualize what they've asked their designer to do. Seeing their dream kitchen captured in a well executed artist's rendering is compelling, especially as it is increasingly rare that designs are presented this way.     

Update on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 10:43AM by Scott A. Stultz

After lots of interruptions (fortunately there is no hot deadline for this job) I'm rendering the views out today. This is the first color layer in progress on the cookhearth view.

cooking hearth view,first color layer 

Update on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 2:08PM by Scott A. Stultz

And the finished presentation views, drawn without getting wrapped up in trying to render every little detail. Unlike computer rendering, hand drawings like these allow the kitchen designer broad license in the final millwork specifications for the room. As is the case with impressionistic art, the renderings engage the client's imagination in an entirely different and more satisfying way than photo-realism.

cooking hearth view, 17 x 11

oblique view, 17 x 11