Pentagram

The White House

A few years ago, Luke Hayman of Pentagram contacted me about doing a cutaway illustration of the White House for the White House Historical Association guidebook. (This was during the Biden administration.)

To start, I did some research, found floor plans, worked with models, was supplied many photos of the interiors (pre-gold-spray-paint interiors, that is), and began modeling:

I put together a few sketches of the exploded view of the building to get the ball rolling.

We made some revisions, experimenting with degrees of transparency, putting it in a blue environment, etc.

Once we decided on a good view and angle, I started building out the rooms. I began with the Green Room:

From there, I added color and furniture to the other rooms:

Once we had the basic elements in place, I added the wallpaper and paintings:

I did a little more tweaking to the exterior of the house and warmed up the exterior colors a little. Here’s the final version of the exploded view:

Then we moved on to the illustrations of the North and South Lawns. I provided a few initial sketches of just the plans without foliage:

Pentagram chose the views they liked best, and I began populating the grounds with the trees in their actual locations:

The minty quality of the grass wasn’t working, so I made some adjustments and continued on with more of the trees:

The greens weren’t quite singing, so I kept adjusting the color. I find greens one of the more challenging colors to work with. They tend to read heavy, especially in 3D mediums. So in general, I go light with green. But for this illustration, that went out the window, and we chose a deeper, more pigmented green.

Here’s the final version: