Architecture In Watercolor Thomas Wells Schaller

Working With Architectural Watercolor the Way Thomas Wells Schaller Approached It

Thomas Wells Schaller's approach to architecture in watercolor is one of those methods that looks effortless on the page but demands a lot of discipline from the artist. I spent years trying to replicate the clean linear quality he achieved while maintaining the soft atmospheric feel of watercolor washes. The short version is that he combined precise ink drawing with controlled wet-on-dry washes, and most of the magic came down to paper choice and timing. Schaller treated architecture as a subject that deserved both accuracy and atmosphere. His drawings are structurally sound, often drawn with a technical pen or fine brush line before any wash touches the paper. The washes themselves are typically warm, muted tones — ochres, burnt siennas, pale blues — applied in thin transparent layers. He did not fight the medium. Where a lot of artists would try to force hard edges everywhere, Schaller let the paint do what paint does. The paper matters enormously here. He worked almost exclusively on rough-hot press paper, which holds washes differently than cold press. The texture grabs the pigment and creates that slightly granulated look that makes buildings feel weathered and real rather than sterile and illustrated. I use 140-pound cold press when I need more control, but it does not give you the same result. If you want that Schaller feel, go hot press at least 300gsm. Anything thinner warps too much under repeated washes.

The Process Step By Step

Start With a Dry Ink or Wash Drawing

Schaller rarely drew directly with watercolor. He established the architecture first. You can use a very dilute ink wash or a hard pencil sketch, but the key is that the lines stay light enough to disappear under subsequent layers. I used to draw with a 0.3 millimeter micron pen and then found that the black lines were too permanent and harsh. Switching to a brown sepia ink softens everything immediately and blends into the wash palette naturally. Measure your proportions first. Draw a light rectangle defining the overall composition, then block in the major massing of the building before anything else. Do not get lost in details like window muntins or cornice work until you have the basic shape right. This saves a lot of headaches later when you realize the whole perspective is slightly off and you have already painted twelve layers over it.

Lay Down Your First Wash While the Ink Is Set

Once your ink drawing is completely dry, you are ready for the first wash. Mix a large batch of your lightest value color — usually a diluted yellow ochre or pale Payne's gray depending on the lighting you want. Apply it evenly across the sky areas and any light-facing surfaces. Keep the paint thin. One thick wash will overwhelm the drawing underneath. Two thin washes will build depth without losing the line work. The mistake most people make here is going too dark too fast. Schaller built up his values slowly over four or five sessions on a single piece. Each session added a little more saturation to shadow areas while leaving the highlights relatively untouched. This layering is what gives his work that luminous quality. It also means you need patience and a space where you can leave paintings alone for a day or two between layers.

Define Shadows With Controlled Wet-on-Dry Technique

When the first wash dries completely, which should take somewhere between two and four hours depending on humidity, you start adding shadow values. Mix a slightly darker tone using your same color family rather than switching to a completely different hue. Schaller typically stayed within a warm cool palette anchored by burnt sienna and ultramarine or phthalo blue. He rarely introduced pure black or harsh complements. Paint the shadows in with a damp brush on dry paper. This wet-on-dry method keeps the edges predictable. If you go wet-on-wet here, the shadow will bleed into the highlight area and you lose the architectural definition you worked so hard to establish. I learned this the hard way on a commission piece where I was painting a stone facade in late October with high humidity in the studio. The shadows spread about three millimeters past every intended edge and I had to scrape the paper surface with a knife to recover any shape at all. That took most of a day to fix.

Add Texture and Granulation Selectively

This is where Schaller's work really comes alive. He did not try to make every surface look smooth. Brick walls, stucco, weathered wood — each material gets a slightly different treatment. For brick, he often stippled or dabbed with a stiff brush loaded with slightly thicker paint. For stucco or plaster, a flat wash with a few deliberate pigment blooms works better. Granulating pigments like cadmium red light, raw umber, and some of the earth tones will settle into the paper texture naturally. You do not need to force this effect. Let the paper grain do the work. If you are using a smoother hot press paper, you can speed up granulation by sprinkling a tiny bit of fine salt on a damp wash and brushing it off once dry. This creates subtle texture that reads as weathering at viewing distance.

A Common Problem and How I Fixed It

One edge case that comes up repeatedly when working in this style is backruns or hard edges forming as washes dry unevenly. This happens especially when you add a second wash over a partially dry first layer. The fresh water pushes the existing pigment outward and creates a visible dark line. Schaller avoided this by working top to bottom and allowing each section to dry fully before moving adjacent areas. He also kept his palette controlled so that overlapping washes used similar water ratios and did not create sudden shifts in drying speed. When I started encountering this on larger compositions, I switched to working in smaller segments. Instead of tackling an entire wall face at once, I divided the painting into vertical strips and completed each strip completely before moving to the next. It is slower but eliminates the backrun problem almost entirely. You lose some of the spontaneous flow but gain a much higher level of control over the architecture itself.

Pigments and Materials That Actually Work

Schaller did not use expensive professional grade supplies exclusively, but he was selective about what he put on the paper. His core palette consisted of just a handful of colors mixed together. Here is a practical list based on what I have observed in reproductions of his work and what actually produces similar results: Primary wash colors: Yellow ochre, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, and a touch of alizarin crimson for warm shadows. These four mix together to cover most architectural tonal ranges. Support: 100 percent cotton hot press paper, 300gsm minimum. Stretch it properly before starting. A warped board produces uneven washes no matter how skilled you are.

Brushes: A size 8 or 10 round for general washes and a flat brush for larger uniform areas. Keep a separate brush for water only so you do not accidentally transfer pigment where you do not want it. Tools for line work: A 0.1 or 0.2 technical pen with brown ink, or a crow quill pen with diluted India ink toned down with a little tea or brown watercolor. The goal is line work that is visible but subordinate to the wash layers.

Where This Method Falls Short

Architecture in watercolor using this approach has real limitations. It does not handle highly reflective surfaces well. Glass facades, polished metal, wet streets after rain — these require a level of opacity and control that watercolor simply cannot deliver without becoming something else entirely. If your subject is a modern building with a curtain wall system, watercolor is the wrong medium. Go acrylic or gouache instead. The other limitation is time. A Schaller-quality architectural watercolor of moderate complexity can easily take five to seven days of work with drying time between layers included. If you need faster turnaround for client work, you will need to simplify the approach or accept a less refined finish. There is no shortcut through the layering process without losing the depth that defines this style.

How to Find Reference Material for Architecture In Watercolor Thomas Wells Schaller

If you want to study his work directly, his drawings and paintings appear in various architectural publications and museum collections. The AIA has archived some of his contributions. You can also find reproduction prints through art supply retailers and bookstores that carry architectural illustration collections. His process is documented in a few older watercolor technique books from the mid to late twentieth century, though none of them are definitive manuals. Most of what you learn about his method comes from close observation of the finished pieces themselves. Start with small studies before attempting full compositions. A single window frame with surrounding wall texture taught me more about this approach than three or four larger paintings did. The scale forces you to focus on what actually matters — the relationship between line and wash, the temperature of your shadows, and knowing when to stop before the painting becomes overworked and muddy.