I recently developed a series of four hand drawn sketches for my firn studioINSITE to represent various street and sidewalk improvements to a commercial neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado. The loosely drawn line drawings with marker color were quickly developed ideas incorporated into a client presentation.
These are simple drawings to create from Google Street Views and are very effective for showing how specific sections of neighborhood streets could be improved. Here is a step-by-step explanation of my process:
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Sidewalk Widening Sketches
1.Google Street View 2. Red Pencil Mockup
This quick sketch (above) began by saving an image taken directly from the Internet of a Google Street View. The Google camera was mounted above the car and therefore has a perspective reference point approximately 10 feet above the ground. This “looking from above” view is excellent for showing more of the sidewalk activity compared with a standard eye level perspective.
1.Google Street View 2. Red Pencil Mockup
Each “overlay and trace” drawing began with a color print of the image on letter sized paper. For the sketch above, I taped a sheet of tracing paper over a print of the photograph and added new detail to the scene with a red Col-erase pencil. I then taped a new sheet of tracing paper over the red pencil mockup and illustrated the perspective with a Pentel Sign Pen. I added Chartpak AD colored markers directly on the original artwork and completed the entire drawing in less than two hours.
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New Pocket Park Sketch
1.Google Street View 2. Red Pencil Mockup
Once I completed the black and white ink line drawing of this street scene with a Pentel Sign Pen, I made a record scan of the artwork before adding colored marker. There are only about ten different marker colors in this scene. Trees have two shades of green and are topped with yellow marker as a sunlight accent. Notice that the sketch shows more than ten cars parked on the street to add scale and street use. i also added an equal number of people for scale and to create a sense of activity.
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Infill Buildings Sketch
1.Google Street View 2. Red Pencil Mockup
This fourth sketch was created to show how a street corner could be improved by adding a new two-story building. The sidewalk was activated with restaurant seating and furniture. I added extra architectural detail to the existing building and illustrated new street trees along the two block long perspective.
These four sketches start to finish were created in less than eight hours and were quite effective in presenting new ideas to the client about the possibilities of making improvements to a popular commercial street.
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