Draw Urban Landscape and Color Your World

Every person is an island: we are all settled into our own apartments in the buildings located on different streets. Our cities are divided into distinct neighborhoods, countries into regions on the continents separated by oceans. Still, the Earth is round, and this makes us meet each other under the one sun. In my native language (Ukrainian), the word "landscape" is translated as a large area of land ("ландшафт"), while its depiction is denoted with the loan French word "paysage" ("пейзаж").

In this illustration, I wanted to combine all these ideas: the image of land, the definition of land ("not water"), the diversities of geographical and cultural features, the notion of isolation, and the concept of interrelationship and unity. You can also see aspirations for a better future, where the industry occupies less space, where architecture takes whimsical forms, and where there is a place for beauty and recreation in daily routine. Last but not least, I want to bring hope: even if it is raining now, this will bring the rainbow, this is just a natural law.

So, I invite you to draw your very own world of your dreams, following the flexible path I left for you here.

We will need:

§ some paper for initial sketching
§ a piece of paper for the final illustration (I used A3 Whatman paper)
§ an HB pencil for sketching
§ an eraser
§ a ruler (the bigger format your paper has, the bigger ruler you need; I used a 50-cm ruler)
§ colored pencils: blue, pink, yellow, and black: these are CMYK colors, which can give us all other colors by mixing
§ (felt) markers of the same colors for highlights
§ an ink pen for outlines (the width of mine is 0.05)
§ a box cutter for sharpening pencils (we will need it a lot).

My general idea was to draw a globe, but I could not see the final concept in detail. So, I started musing with a pencil in my hand. I recommend you draw as many small sketches as you need until it clicks "That's it!" As far as I was going to draw a globe, I started drawing circles: from smaller to bigger. If you don't have a compass, you can use all objects with a round base you can find.

Start with the smaller one. First, I tried to draw a five-point perspective, where all the objects are curved parallel to a circle's arches. I drew 2 perpendiculars going through the circle's center and divided them into four equal parts (use a bisection method: first, divide the line into halves, then one half into halves, and so on). Then I drew elliptical lines connecting two poles and each point on the perpendiculars. When the grid was ready, I tried to draw a road directing to the center and buildings around it. I didn't like the result much (some buildings appeared to hang in the air) and moved further. But maybe this is the path you might want to follow.

Then I proceed with a "slice buildings" idea: what if a globe is cut into vertical slices that happen to be houses standing in the front of the streets?

Or what if we change a perspective and tilt the globe to 45 degrees, while the houses would surround the center? At this point, I felt I liked the idea of focusing on the center, and I continued to develop it in the next circle. There, I slice the sphere into horizontal layers and then cut these layers into "rays" of land and water.

Finally, I decided to abandon the 5-point perspective and use the same "ray" idea with just a one-point perspective. I tested this version by drawing some houses and roughly coloring with colored pencils. I liked it and decided to turn it into a big piece.

Now we are going to repeat all the steps we did during the sketching stage: build the grid, design the city, and color all the details.

✏️ Note: all the lines should be traced easily to easily erase them later. As far as my light lines were not well captured by the camera, I painted them on top of the photos.

1-2. We are going to center the illustration, so to find the center, we'll draw two diagonals from the corners of the piece of paper. Then, exactly at their intersection, we will put the compass and draw two circles: an outer circle will be the edge of the world/globe, and an inner circle will be the sun.

💡Imagination Space: You can play with their diameters as you want. You can also move the inner circle to the sides to create an asymmetric illustration. You can also plan to draw not the sun, but the moon or the planet core. You can also draw a circle without any compass. Just mark equal distances (radiuses) on the lines from the center and connect the dots with arcs.

3-4. Next, draw perpendicular lines. They will help us further when drawing ellipses. Now mark the edges of land and water pieces. 💡You can play with their number and width here.

5. When we have our lands divided from water, we can define their surfaces. Choose the height of your first land and draw an ellipse on this height. (In my case, this is the center). The ellipse should be parallel to the horizontal diameter of the circles. Imagine you are cutting the watermelon into horizontal slices. Your task is to draw the line of the cut.

6. Now repeat this step with the inner circle. As far as the piece of land is going to stop touching the sun's surface, we need to choose at what height this should happen. I decided to draw plain land 💡but yours may be sloppy, going upward or downward.

7. When both ellipses as well as side lines are drawn, we can thicken the lines limiting the surface of the land piece.

8. Repeat drawing ellipses for other pieces of water and land.

9-12. When the surfaces of the lands and waters are ready, we can go deeper and draw the lines that limit them vertically, both on the surface of the globe and on the surface of the sun. For this, draw an ellipsis, which connects two poles of the globe and goes through the edge of the surface. This time imagine you are cutting the watermelon into vertical triangular slices, leading the knife to the center and moving it down. Then thicken the necessary (all the visible) lines and erase unnecessary lines.

13-14. In this phase, we are finally going to design the city. We start by planning streets: first, draw avenues parallel to the land edges, then, curved streets perpendicular to the avenues. 💡However, your street grid can follow another pattern.

15. In the areas, created by the intersection of the streets, mark the corners of house grounds with dots. Within the area limited by the dots, we will build a house. This way you can clearly see the space between the buildings, where you will plant trees, place playgrounds, or put roadsigns.

16. Moving from dots to lines, we mark the "floors" of the future buildings. ✏️ Tip: if you don't want to think much about the perspective, avoid corners and straight lines. Let the city be shaped with futuristic curves!

With little circles and rectangles, mark the bases of trees, playgrounds, bus stops, road signs, etc. I also drew arrows on the roads to understand the traffic directions and plan bus stops. {Some roads are two-directional, and their bus stops are situated on both sides. Others are one-directional, where the bus stops are on the right side (I have a right-side movement street). Pay attention to the connection of the one-directional roads, driving cars should normally circulate around the city.}

17-18. When the floors are ready, "build" the walls and roofs. Just draw vertical lines parallel to the paper edges if you want straight walls, but don't limit yourself. Here you can unleash your imagination and design whatever you want.

19. After your pencil sketch is finalized, outline it with an ink pen and erase lines that should be invisible. ✏️ Note: some ink pens write very badly on top of the pencil traces, so choose the right one. (In this photo, you can see the work of the "bad" one.) You can also scribble the lines and then, after erasing pencil outlines, apply the pen once more. As for the width of the pen, the thinner it writes, the neater will be the drawing. I started with 0.1mm but 0.05mm looks much better. Don't repeat my mistake, test your pen on the draft and use one width of lines throughout the drawing. However, you can vary the line widths for more important parts (like walls and roads) and other details (like windows or tree branches).

20. When you accomplished your first city part/piece of land, proceed with the others by performing the same steps.

21-22. Now, you can draw elements shared by the pieces of land. 💡 This can be bridges, ships, planes, bungee ropes, gigantic dinosaurs jumping over the ocean, and anything else inhabiting your head.

23. Finally, we can color our drawing. The main tip here is to hatch with distinct lines, which can be ensured only by a well-sharpened pencil. Directing your strokes, you can mark in what plane your surface lays or what volume/shape it has.

24-26. Apply strokes not only straight but also spiraled, curved, and crossed to create a feel of texture. I suggest starting from the lightest parts, so that if your strokes accidentally appear outside the planned area, you can mask them with the darker colors.

27-29. After you finish coloring the larger areas of land and water, you can proceed with smaller buildings and other elements. First, hatch the area with the main color. Then, add shadows and lights: if you use a yellow pencil on top of your coloring, it will add more light; for shadowing, use a blue one. My buildings are made of glass, which reflects the light of the pink sun, so I also add pink strokes where the light touches the surface.

With the limited palette, you have to replace real-world colors with those you have. In my case, the green of the land becomes yellow, while the green of the palm trees turns into blue. For other objects, it's a great idea to apply a uniform coloring pattern. For example, all my bus stops are pink, so it is easy to recognize them in regard to the small scale and schematic drawing.

30. When you colored one neighborhood, it would be easier to apply the same coloring pattern to the others. Remember to enjoy the process, as it will take a long time!

31. ✏️ Tip for coloring water: start with wiggling horizontal lines; the closer they are to the viewer, the smaller the amplitude and the longer the wave should be. Add small strokes depicting occasional waves among the long lines. Cross the horizontal waves with the vertical and then with diagonal lines. Add smaller resonance lines around objects in the water, if you have such. Apply color variation: the sunlight, the shore reflection, and the shadow from the overhanging bridges. Remember that reflected objects would be depicted with high-amplitude zig-zags, not with straight lines. Add more main colors to fill the blanks.

32. Repeat the same process with the "depth" side of the water.

33-34. In the upper part of the illustration, we will start by coloring the smallest objects, like birds and rainbow.

As far as we have only three main colors in our palette and the rainbow has seven, we will need to intersect our strokes to achieve the other four colors. The rainbow is covered with smoky clouds in places, and regarding its radius, it would be a hard task to trace perfect arcs. So, start with small straight strokes, gradually changing the angle.

35-36. Now, we can color the sky. Its main feature is being darker at the top and the outer circumference of the sphere and lighter near the horizon closer to the center, where the sun lights more intensively. The sky is a large area, so again, start with small vertical strokes and curve them a bit near the edges. To achieve more intensive colors, apply crosshatching. You can outline the clouds a bit, to define their shadows, but try not to touch them with the pencil now.

37. In the real world, when the sun is located near the horizon, the sky is colored pink, yellow, and green, too. So, we have to add these colors by stroking horizontally: first, with a pink pencil, just above the lands, then with a yellow one.

Then color the clouds. They are rarely just white: they have blue shadows and pink and yellow sunlight reflections. Use curvy strokes with pink and yellow pencils from beneath (where the sun highlights them) and with the blue one on top.

38. The sun is the central piece of my illustration. We have to show its spherical volume, so imagine tracing with the pencil around the globe. You will draw ellipses. On the top, they will be small and easy to trace at one, but where they are getting bigger, start with the edge and move your hand towards the center. After finishing drawing horizontal ellipses, draw vertically. Add shadow by applying diagonal lines from the edges towards the center. Add some yellow to the middle to make the sun shine.

39. To add a frame to the illustration, I decided to place the world in a soap bubble, which will emphasize its fragility and wonderfulness.

Start drawing small rounded strokes outlining the circle. Mix the colors where they meet each other. Then add another inner circle making more blurred and wider strokes in places.

40. 💎Secret technique: to make the illustration shine, you can cover your pencil coloring with (felt) markers. The pencil layer will make your marker tips slide and there will be no intersected strokes. Also, markers will fill the white space the pencils left, still, all the pencil work will be distinct and visible. In this illustration, I used markers only for highlighting buildings (especially shadows) as the main details and also added some leaves to the trees.

41. Finally, take a photo of your piece. Feel free to experiment with the lighting. You can place the lamp under the sun, use several light sources, or leverage the shadow from the window as I did.

I want to thank you for following this guide! I hope you enjoyed the process and I will be happy if you share your artworks inspired by mine with me.