Architectural Illustration: Capture a City’s Personality

Carlo shares his artistic journey to date, introducing the ideologies that have shaped his career and motivated him to pursue his passions: illustration, architecture, and traveling. He reveals the artists that most inspire him, along with his philosophical perspective on creativity.

Start with an introduction of how Carlo approaches Architectural Illustration, and a glimpse at how he has prepared this course, with the aim to help you find your own style when illustrating architecture.

According to Carlo, the final result largely depends on your inspiration of the location you decide to illustrate. He suggests many ideas to help you choose yours, such as a place close to where you live, a city you visited that is special to you, or even a mix of different cities. What is important to Carlo is that you let your imagination run free.

Use books, films, internet, maps, and more, to find inspiration and information on your city’s identity. Carlo shows you how to imagine your city as a person and find its characteristics to give more depth to your architectural illustration.

Next, you’ll start your open-air sketch, a practice that Carlo invites you to enjoy using instinct rather than precision. Combine your sketches with photos, to examine the details of your location and move onto selecting your most useful sketches to trace each individual building separately. Carlo will show you an array of options to experiment with, encouraging you to experiment as much as possible, to find the characteristics of your style.

Discover how to implement people, fantasy elements, and more, to obtain your final architectural composition. Move onto scanning your buildings and find out how Carlo uses Photoshop to enhance his work. He shows you how to create the ideal palette, use the Transparency tool, and add shadows, introducing different techniques for you to find your own style syntax.

Once you have completed your final illustration, Carlo shows you how to analyze your work, to find its qualities and defects in order to improve over time. Prepare your file for different uses (personal, advertising, social media, and more) and finish the course with his expert tips on how to create a great portfolio.