A cadre of landscape architects spent the hot and humid Thursday morning moving from shady spot to shady spot Downtown between East Bay Street and Hemming Park.
They left the climate-controlled confines of the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront, where they are attending the state convention of the American Society of Landscape Architects, to document the urban environment and hone their sketching skills.
The tour was led by artist James Richards, who is the keynote speaker for the convention. He’s also associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington and a member of the advisory board of the global nonprofit Urban Sketchers.
He travels the world helping revive the art of drawing by hand, which he said has been practically lost due to technology.
“For the past 15 years, most designers have been trained on computers,” Richards said. “Now, we’re figuring out we may have thrown the baby out with the bath water when we stopped drawing.”
As the group walked around Downtown, they stopped at Bay and Newnan streets, Adams and Laura streets and then Hemming Park. They spent a few minutes at each site sketching the streetscape, creating their interpretations of what they saw.
“Sketching forces you to really look and it gives you confidence to take a leap of imagination,” said Richards.
After the group made sketches at each stop, they had what Richards called a “throwdown,” when the sketchbooks were tossed down onto the sidewalk in an impromptu exhibit, which caught the attention of quite a few passersby.
Richards critiqued the drawings and offered tips on technique, composition, perspective and proportion before members of the group gathered their sketchpads and headed to its next stop.
He said he enjoys the enthusiasm from landscape architects when they replace their computer and mouse with paper and pen.
“The connection between the eye, the mind and the hand is part of our DNA. Since the beginning of history, designs have started with a sketch,” said Richards.
The ability to render a drawing by hand is becoming an asset for landscape architects, he said, because developers and property owners are beginning to prefer sketches over computer-generated rendering for promoting their projects.
The exercise had a profound effect on Emily O’Mahoney, a partner with the Gentile Glas Holloway O’Mahoney and Associates landscape architecture firm in Jupiter.
“I’ve always loved art, but sometimes in practice you don’t get to do much of it,” she said. “I’m going to start carrying around a sketchbook.”
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