Celebrating 10 Years!

LVB took the leap into the digital drawing age in 2021 by producing her first illustrations on the iPad using the sleek Apple pencil. While drawing on a pane of glass has not replaced my love of drafting materials, it has expanded my brush and tool palette and provides greater flexibility for illustration revisions. Digital illustrations retain LVB's signature hand-drawn and watercolor character while venturing further into new creative territory. Some of LVB’s works produced on the iPad include Lynker Intel's Service Map, the Hill Country Alliance Illustrated map, St. Vrain Forest Health Illustrations, and the Colorado River Land Trust map.

Who remembers when this photo was the header banner of my website? Big thanks to Mason Lacy with Recreation Engineering and Planning for snapping this great photo of me after supping down my first white water rapid in the Grand Canyon. I met the Lacy family in Boulder in 2017 while heading to the annual Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference. Since then, I’ve been helping REP transform their technical CAD plans into illustrated renderings to communicate the benefits of transforming dam sites into river recreation features for communities nationwide.

LVB’s signature watercolor rendering style began with these juicy Chartpak markers (a few of which I packed away in my suitcase to grad school;-) Lauren developed this rendering method during an eight-year career as a landscape architect with the SWA Group. A little wash of these felt tip markers over a pen and ink trace paper drawing lends a watercolor quality to the rendering.  Of course, greens far outweigh the other colors in my marker palette. Some of my preferred shades for rendering wetlands and riparian areas include chrome green, chartreuse, and dark olive.

LVB’s first interpretive signage project grew from her graduate school thesis project for the Wolf Run Creek Association in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. The project was the feather in the cap of a multi-year, multi-stakeholder collaboration to restore portions of Black Earth Creek’s Class I trout stream and build a public recreational trail. Lauren’s thesis work explored stream restoration post-dam removal. LVB was happy to celebrate the stream restoration and trail dedication with the project champions and friends and, from here, take her first steps into the path of self-employment.

Did you know Lauren lived abroad for a year in the last stronghold of the Spanish Moorish empire? While living in Granada from the summer of  2013-2014, I learned Spanish at a small school in the Albaicin across from the famed Alhambra palace. I hiked in the Sierra Nevadas (and a portion of the Camino de Santiago), explored the advanced water systems of the Moorish city that flow and bubble with snowmelt water, taught English to young adults, and helped a Granadina professor of biology launch her mountaineering tourism business, Sierra y Sol.

Did you know that Lauren donned waders and ran total station surveys as part of a three-year apprenticeship with Inter-Fluve Inc.?  Lauren got her feet wet in almost all aspects of river and wetland restoration and dam removal projects. She participated in field reconnaissance and site historical research and helped prepare grants, permits and construction documents for built projects. Lauren is grateful for the experience of learning with some of the best fluvial geomorphologists in the field!  I thank my colleagues at Inter-Fluve for the encouragement and support to start my own business and for continuing to include me on their creative teams over the years.

In case you’re wondering what the heck I’m doing in this photo, I’m emulating the iconic ‘bankfull’ gesture of legendary fluvial cowboy (and campfire harmonica extraordinaire), Dave Rosgen. I must thank the former President of the SWA Group, Kevin Shanley (champion of restoring Houston’s bayous), for encouraging me to take Rosgen’s introductory course to stream restoration. After a week of traipsing in and out of meandering stream channels in the sage-filled alluvial valleys of Missoula, Montana, I was hooked. One year later, I packed my bags and headed north to explore the fields of watershed planning and river and wetland restoration at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

I pocketed this Ponderosa pinecone in the Colorado Rockies Front Range during a forest tour with members of the St. Vrain Forest Health Partnership. During our day-long mountain tour, I learned so much about the ecology of the Ponderosa pine forest and how decades of fire suppression have created fuel for the region’s latest natural disaster: severe wildfire. Site visits are a valuable way for me to understand the project firsthand with the experts, photograph and sketch what I see, and capture natural inspiration.

Behind the illustrated map renderings are multiple layers of geospatial data. Most illustrated map projects begin with assembling geospatial data layers into a drawing basemap and then carefully extracting the most relevant features to express the project goals or story. I developed the skill of reading contours during my 8-year career as a landscape architect, and began developing GIS skills in graduate school. I love maps, and thinking BIG PICTURE. Geospatial information helps me conceptualize projects at a variety of scales.

I like to carry along my trusty Moleskine notebook to project kickoff meetings and team calls to capture keywords, themes, ideas and thumbnail sketches. Initial client conversations are fertile ground for teasing out essential elements of the story and gathering descriptive imagery. Talking points and sound bites scribbled in my notebook catalogue our discussion and become fodder to guide the visual design concepts. If you see my head down scribbling away, take it as a sign that I'm paying close attention!

I found this glass dome paperweight in a fantastic consignment shop in Milwaukee. I love the hand-drawn and colored rendering of the little pedestrian bridge spanning an idyllic pond. It reminds me of my travels and early work designing parks as a landscape architect. While working on my drafting board, staring out to Lake Mendota in front of the open window, this little paperweight kept my lightweight trace papers from flying across the room. It’s still a hallmark object in my physical studio space. Find your own whimsical paper weight at the John Derian Company Inc.

You know it’s time for final rendering when the Micron pens hit the drawing board. Traditional hand-drawn projects are sketched out in pencil and can go through several rounds of revision before final design approval. I like to work with these fine-tip Micron pens to create the desired line-weight hierarchy and level of control for the final draft. Final pen drawings and color renderings are digitally scanned and composited in Adobe Creative Cloud applications for final art packaging.

LVB’s work has slowly shifted from the physical drawing board to digital artboards on her 27” iMac. Lauren is steadily building graphic design skills in Adobe’s powerful creative suite of software, including InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The studio has completed graphic compositions for large-scale posters and interpretive signage design, small-scale print documents for trail maps and field guides, and scalable vector graphic designs. The next steps include creating more interactive visual stories using ESRI’s storymaps and working with plugins and web developers to make the final art more interactive on your site.

Since moving to Austin, Texas, from Madison, Wisconsin, in 2019, Lauren has been attending the Texas Land Trust Council’s annual conference in Austin, connecting with land and water conservation professionals across the state. Lauren cares about protecting and preserving our water resources and understands that land conservation is a primary tool in Texas. She loves helping conservation partners communicate their stories and mission through a unique blend of illustrative mapping, science interpretation and graphic design.

Lauren loves collaborating with her engineering colleagues in river and floodplain restoration. She spent three years after grad school working in a river restoration engineering firm, reading and preparing construction plans and details. While LVB no longer works in CAD (thank goodness!) PDF copies of scaled engineering plans are the foundation of the studio’s conceptual design plan renderings and cross-sectional illustrations.

Working with wonderful clients and project teams over the years has been a joy. I truly value our fun and fruitful working sessions. Every creative project is a collaborative effort and my clients and their passion keep me going. I love listening to your ideas and doing my best to visualize what you imagine. Thanks for continuing to challenge me creatively and trusting me with your vision.