Architectural Illustration: Capture a City’s Personality

Architectural Illustration: Capture a City’s Personality

“Dear students, We have reached the end of the course! I explained to you my personal method I usually follow when I create a cityscape or an architectural illustration. In Unit 1, I told you about my story and the importance to support your creative daimon. I also told you how to catch the right inspiration and its function in helping us to build a personal artistic personality. In Unit 2, I shared with you my working method, which is basically divided into two parts (analog and digital), mirroring the way we are actually living today and collecting the best things these two worlds can offer. First, you have to choose a city, but of course, most of the time, the subject is chosen by the clients. After deciding the city to sketch, you need to study the city, basically using all the possible sources: books, maps, interviews with the inhabitants, movies, and so on. Of course, it is so important to know directly the city, walking in the streets at different hours of the day, and trying to catch its personality and identity. All this preparation work is very interesting and it transfers a lot of inspirational energy to you as the city is getting more and more familiar. It is very important to work on a real city, so my choice was the amazing Mexico City, where I discovered a corner around the Holy Trinity Church, in the historic center area, that made me feel the quintessence of the city. At this point, in Unit 2, the analog part fully begins and we go with the open-air sketches and photo shooting. After this very important and crucial step, we went to the studio to study the sketches in depth. I decided to keep some of them in pencil and to trace others in ink. With Unit 3, we began the digital part by scanning our sketches divided in architecture, objects, and people, and so once they have been transformed in high-resolution files, we combined them together on different layers just like in a theatrical or cinema set design. Once we created our black and white illustration, we proceeded with colors, shadows, and other effects so typical of my style, like transparency and other changes in Photoshop. In the following Unit 4, we analyzed the final illustration to find out points to improve or erase. I gave you tips about a good portfolio and the importance to specialize ourselves in a particular illustration field. As you know, following the different tasks, we can dialogue together through the internet. The tasks are extremely important because the real goal of my class is not to impose you a method or even a style, but rather to show you my personal method just like an inspiration to encourage you to find out a very unique style on your own. So please, do not copy me, this would be too bad, but just learn the idea that it is very important to find your personal artistic character by making many drawing experiments! Please, I also kindly ask you to be patient, since I am a very busy illustrator, and probably sometimes you will have to wait a little before I reply. Of course, I will reply to everyone and I will be happy to see your works! I cannot wait! If, in addition to the Domestika community, you want to share your creation with the whole world, you can upload photos of your work to Instagram with the hashtag #CarloStangaDomestika. I would love to see the whole process! Goodbye! I wish you all the best and I hope to meet you sometimes in person! Stay healthy and sound, and remember the tip of all tips: Draw, draw, draw! Carlo”

Partial transcription of the video

“FINAL PROJECT Let's make a recap of the course. First we talked about who I am, and how my drawing daimon has pushed me to keep exploring my illustration skills and applying them to architecture and urbanism. I also talked about my influences. Artists like Saul Steinberg, Paul Hogarth and David Hockney, who keep inspiring this daimon of mine. Then we started with the preparations. I told you how I usually choose a city to draw, in this case, Mexico City. I gave you some insights on how I study a city, and try to find its personality and essence. We went out to the city and explored downtown...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Architectural Illustration: Capture a City’s Personality

• Level: Beginner
• 98% positive reviews (569)
• 16712 students
• 4 units
• 23 lessons (5h 4m)

• Category

  Illustration

• Software

  Adobe Photoshop

• Areas

  Architectural Illustration, Architecture, Digital Illustration, Drawing, Traditional illustration