[thegreenman_us]

What tools and methods do you use to color render your designs? watercolors? pastels, acrylics, colored pencil, markers, digital img. process (photoshop)? Do you use a specific paper? Do you trace the original or work on a printed copy?

Personally I like pastels for graphic art, but I use colored pencils on drawings. They do have some limitations though.

I've never done watercolor, but I love the way it looks when well done.

I'd love to learn some different techniques esp. where markers and watercolors are concerned.

Please share......

Chris

[Stonehenge]

I wish I could tell you I have some wonderful techniques, but I learned more or less by trial and error.

My preference is to have the plan copied onto vellum, then use Primsacolor markers. Copying onto vellum works because the copied plan won't bleed when markered over, yet the markers will bleed, giving you the opportunity to blend colors nicely.

The part I sometimes struggle with is the logistics - you can't just launch into something and start coloring wherever - some elements don't work as nicely when you blend lighter or darker, so you have to plan out some of your steps in advance. At least I do.

[papercutter]

Depends on the job. I just did a 1.5 acre property that had a lot going on in the planting plan so detail was critical and I couldn't be too artsy. Plotted the CAD plan with just circles for plants, at a light color. Went through and laid down my color with markers- trees first so I don't forget not to color what's underneath, then the groundplane so that if that gets messed up I don't yet have a lot of time in. Next, I color plants, laying down colors from light to dark, 2-5 colors per plant depending. Finally, I use different size pens and markers to draw the outlines of my plants. I do this last so the solvents in the markers don't smear the lines.

My fancier drawings are colored on trace over the line drawing, scanned in, and layered in Photoshop. What I like about this is it lets me archive the color rendered drawing without paying Kinkos an obscene amount of money for a large-format scan.

I'm looking at buying a Wacom tablet and Painter; that'll let me do everything digitally, as long as I like the results.

Dave

[saslandscape]

I make regular black and white copies at Kinkos and color with AD Markers and then use Prisma color pencil on top. I use Sharpie Paint Colors (water-based fine point) to do the little dots for the flowering plants. Clients love the look and can easily read the plan. Takes me about 1- 2 hours to color the plans, but that's my favorite part of the design process- seeing it come to life with color.

I took many "coloring" classes back in college as part of our landscape architecture progam, and was lucky to have a teacher (who's well known in China) teach us how to use AD markers and make our designs look like works of art. I've even had some of my clients frame my designs