Intricate details of buildings along Brown Street in Wickford were typical of Marjorie Vogel’s drawings.

Providence Journal FILES / MICHAEL J.B. KELLY

NORTH KINGSTOWN — The closer you look at Marjorie Joy Vogel’s delicate pen-and-ink drawings, the more you see. Leaves on trees, the edges of a brick, two beachgoers on a distant shore . . . all emerge to the observant eye.

Vogel wove minute details, and a few surprises, into whimsical maps of South Kingstown, Narragansett, the Chariho region, East Greenwich and beyond. She was also known for painstaking drawings of landmark buildings spanning from Newport’s mansions to the U.S. Capitol to St. Peter’s Basilica.

Vogel, whose pieces worked their way into many Rhode Island homes and businesses, died Saturday of a heart attack at 76. Her passing was noted on the Wickford Art Association’s Web site.

“She made something complex look easy,” said Deedra Durocher, who knew Vogel through the Wakefield Rotary Club. “There was a simplicity that you just kind of took for granted until you looked very close.”

Vogel spent endless hours in her studio, on Ten Rod Road, peering at photographs through a massive magnifying glass as she strived to bring architectural and historical precision to her drawings, said David O’Brien, a friend who worked with her on a print of the Providence skyline, before the Marriot Hotel was built.

“I don’t think she ever realized how good she was,” said O’Brien, owner of Picture This Framing Center and Gallery.

Others did, however, and her renderings won wide acclaim. Through the years, her works, which included note cards and gold-plated ornaments, were commissioned by such notable institutions as the Vatican; The [Jimmy] Carter Center; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library.

But she was best known to friends and acquaintances for her good humor, ever-present smile and willingness to donate pieces, and the time they required, to various causes. Her image of The Towers appears on the poster for the Narragansett Art Festival every year.

“She never turned anybody down,” O’Brien said.

Vogel’s lively humor could be found in some of her works. O’Brien and his business partner appear on Narragansett Town Beach on one map. Her good friend Anne Hoyle’s bichon frisÉ, Keela, is peeking out of her owner’s blue van in another.

“She was a one-of-a-kind gem,” Hoyle, 77, of North Kingstown, said.

“She just wrapped her arms around everybody.”

Vogel traveled the world with her former husband, taking art classes in Norway, the Philippines and Senegal, before settling in South County in the 1970s. She regaled friends with tales of her travels in Africa, Russia and London as well as the escapades of mischievous monkey the family kept in Manila.

She ran a bed-and-breakfast in Narragansett for several years, launching Rhode Island Originals, a business featuring her artwork, in 1972. She moved to North Kingstown in the 1980s, Hoyle said.

A fixture at the Wickford Art Festival, she continued to sell her drawings and watercolors of cherished Rhode Island sites for affordable prices, despite the demand, O’Brien said.

“She never got rich, but she always had a lot of fun doing what she was doing,” O’Brien said.

Vogel is survived by a son, Douglas Vogel of Pawtucket, and a daughter, Dianna Vogel, of Oxford, Mass., Hoyle said. Calling hours were held yesterday.

A memorial service will take place in the coming weeks.

kmulvane@projo.com