Home Sweet Home Illustrations

WRITTEN BY MEGIN POTTER PHOTOS PROVIDED

Reality can be messy. Illustrations give us the gift of seeing things as we want them to be.

Rarely, does a home look the way we imagine it does. Our memory of a place has a funny way of highlighting the parts we feel emotionally connected to and forgetting about the parts that we don’t. Until we see a photograph, we tend to forget that a tree in full bloom – as beautiful as it may be – hides most of the house from view. We may imagine our gardens as flourishing with flowers, when in reality, they’re a bit sparse. “That’s what I can do as an illustrator – switch seasons, add flowers, move trees – for the best picture. I can make it so you actually have a much prettier representation of the house,” said Marcie Slot.

FASHIONABLE & PERSONALIZED HOME PORTRAITS

For more than 35 years, Marcie Slot has been creating home portraits, architectural renderings and illustrations. Although she has been interested in architecture since she was a child, she began her career as a fashion illustrator. One of Slot’s first commercial building illustrations was of fashion retailer, Peter Harris. At the time, she had two young children, so she began working from photographs and blueprints to create oneof-a-kind architectural illustrations at her in-home studio and selling them to real estate agents, builders, and homeowners across the country. Working in watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils and pen & ink, she creates detailed pictures of structures and their surroundings. Since 2008, she has been adding computer renderings into her repertoire, but still prefers the flexibility and intimacy of hand-drawn illustrations.

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT

Each of Slot’s illustrations takes an average of 5 to 15 hours to complete (depending on size). One of her biggest commissions however, was so large, that it measured five feet in length.

Over the years, Slot has heard over and over again how her work is not only a conversation piece but a treasured family heirloom.

Families have her illustrate their homes as they move from place to place and real estate agents present their clients with her work as a housewarming gift. One Dallas-based agent was pleasantly surprised when she returned to a recently sold home to see a dozen of Marcie Slot’s illustrations already hung along the wall. It turned out not only was the agent a long-time client of Slot’s, but the homeowners were, as well.

In addition to a framed illustration of a structure, Slot offers notecards of her work, as well. At the Clifton Park Library, notecards are still available for purchase, of the series she did depicting the history of buildings at the site.

For more information, go to HouseArt.biz S S

The Artist’s Touch For this ivy-covered Cape-Cod home, illustrator Marcie Slot created a cozy storybook cottage feel by thinning out the greenery to expose more of the brick exterior and adjusting the color to add in more reddish hues. This home’s charm was further enhanced by eliminating an unwanted water feature, some of the greenery lining the walkway, and a large tree branch that obstructed the front view of the house. By slightly shifting the angle of the image and adding in a lot of light blue and white sky above the structure, it creates an open, balanced feel to the final piece.