How do you draw the diagram?
 

How much time does it take to draw one building?

I work with Photoshop (pencil & brush) and draw with 1:1 pixels.
It takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour per building.
(For tall or complex buildings, it takes longer.)
The pixel pencil brush draws the whole thing, and then the multiplayer and overlay layer have light and window effects.

I refer to Street View when I draw a building. (For example, the U.S. building is Google Street View, the Korean building is Naver Street View, and the Chinese building is Baidu Street View.)

If Street View isn't updated, I draw it by looking at the actual image or concept picture.

I wonder how you work:)

Hey. This could be an interesting Thread!

I usually try to get my hands on a floorplan and/or section of the building (since plain elevations are usually hard to get) and draw myself the elevation I want to have. For office and residential buildings I usually try to create a cornered view because it looks more interesting, for churches I usually aim for a south front view or the towers to be left and the apsis/choir to be right.
If I can't find any plans I work of google maps images and measure them.
For the heights I try to find verifiable heights for the building and try to work out the rest by proportion.

Drawing an elevation of a church in CAD usually takes 1 hour, simpler buildings take half an hour or less.

Then I colour them in Photoshop. In a first step I assign all the colors/materials and in a second step I add shaddows.

Then I merge all the layers and scale it to 1:1 and do minor adjustments if details don't look right.
The photoshop part for a complex building takes another hour, for a simple office building it may take als little as 20 mins.

Thats usually my process...

Here are some of the steps:
https://i.ibb.co/ZcWVXnt/workflow.jpg
and the shown examples:
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/images/101788.gif 2 hours total
_

https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/images/100183.gif ~40 mins total
_

https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/images/99863.gif 1 hour total

I could use CAD since I know how to, but I just use Photoshop.
Sometimes I don't even work with layers. Sometimes I do, mostly if there are lots of glass. Getting a glass surface I'm satisfied with is quite hard though. :D

Normally it takes half an hour to two hours to draw a simple building. I usually don't draw for longer, so complex buildings can take up to a week if I only draw for two hours a day.

I mostly do 1:1 from the start. I did a few drawings in other scales but got disappointed with the details everytime I rescaled.
Better do 1:1 from the start than to fix a rescaled drawing.
One trick to get a nice 1:1 drawing is to cheat when it comes to number of floors or columns of windows. Nobody's gonna count anyway and my drawing looks similar enough to the real building.

I totally get your point.
I try to be as precise as possible, but in the result some of the buildings don't look as "crisp" as the ones drawn directly in 1:1. Also if you do the correct heights of floors which mostly will range between 2,20 and 4,50m there will seldomly be an exact pixel to floor ratio, resulting in smoothed out floors...

But specially if there are curves, slopes or more complex forms i prefer a bit of "mushyness" in order to have smooth edges instead of having the trouble to try to make a tower or a dome or something work in a pixel-drawing way.

Interesting to see the different approaches. :cheers:

Yup, I agree CAD is a necessity then.

Indeed! :cheers:

That's interesting.
When I also draw on a 1:1 scale, I don't fit the number of windows every day.
What's important, after all, is how much this painting looks like a real building.

I also think so. For historical and cultural buildings or complex curved buildings, I think it's better to draw big from the beginning and then reduce the size.

But what I'm drawing these days is a simple pixel brush because it focuses on things like residential buildings, office buildings, and so on.

making interesting drawings occupies few hours or even days of my time, because it's difficult to me to be concentrated, while drawing I often deflect.
I draw 1:1 with photoshop, pencil for base and other tools for effects. When floor to floor height isn't multiple of 3, I draw fragment in 3 or 4 pixels for each storey and then scale it vertically
for example animation of drawing process of Annunciation Cathedral in Kharkiv, 2007
https://live.staticflickr.com/4843/3...fcdf17_o_d.gif

Ukraine hotel in Moscow, 2013
https://live.staticflickr.com/7880/4...0880cd_o_d.gif

Depending on the building, it can take me from a few minutes to several days.

I make my 1:1 drawings in the classic MS Paint (not the new one from Windows 10) and then I go to Photoshop for shading and smoothing.

Exceptionally, I make larger drawings and then reduce them, but only those with particular shapes and details (like old buildings or other structures).

I did the same too ☺ but after that I've found these tools (pencil, copy rectangular selection) in photoshop

I like the simplicity of Paint, especially for filling in flat colours (and that you can use the left and right mouse buttons with different colours).

So I go from this:
https://i.imgur.com/UWLV2oO.png

To this:
https://i.imgur.com/prXHYeu.png

Most will take a couple hours, although I rarely do it all in one go and I'm usually working on several at a time. Postmodern buildings take longer than modern buildings and pre-art deco buildings and churches take the longest.

I also start out in MS paint to get the general shape and colors and then go to Photoshop to add texture and detail. I don't do the Paint drawing in 1:1, though. I usually do it with 1 pixel = 1 foot so I can use the Google Earth imagery and height numbers as precisely as possible, and then I shrink it and sharpen it once I'm done. Unfortunately something is a bit odd since I've gotten my most recent computer where images look much sharper when they're in my desktop folder than after I upload them, and I haven't been able to figure out why yet.

Everyone, Your way of working is interesting.
Why hasn't this forum been created long ago :)?

Let me introduce the way I draw.


http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...PSEIQunrEZqJ6i
http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...cqymf0Jn3D7lWx

Step 1
First, look at the picture of the building.
Calculate from which angle I want to draw.


http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...-4ild4cVT59xfT

Step 2

Draw a picture with Photoshop.
I use a pixel brush. I work on a 1:1 scale.

(1) Draw the frame of a building other than the window.
The color of the building is also matched at this stage.

(2) Coat the windows.

(3) Add a multiplayer layer, and apply light and shade to the parts of the building that have different angles.

(4) Add an overlay layer, overlapping effects or images that can make the building colorful.

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...qLwbatpwmL0plp

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...UVRQ0ruwvSpID2

In this way, I generally work on several buildings at once.
In the case of apartment complexes, they work all at once.:)
It's 11 similar buildings, but it's subtly different.
These buildings took about four hours.

This type of apartment is one of the quick and comfortable shapes.
However, I get tired of drawing this kind of shape.

Number of windows...
I guess the number of blocks horizontally, but I tend to ignore the number of verticals.
I like to work in large quantities, so...
It's going to be too hard if you try to match the number of windows.
Also, as long as you're working on a 1:1 scale, it's hard to match the number of windows because of the pixel limit.

I tend to ignore some of the details that are too detailed, but I tend to maintain an important and overall point.

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...6k1VR2ZLYJLc3h

This building took about four to five hours. I don't like the results of the work...

hello friends, i use paint and photopaint. It takes me an average of 1 hour to 2 hours per drawing, sometimes up to 4 hours for complex drawings or taller buildings. for larger scale drawings like the burj khalifa 4-1 it took about 15 hours!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...7598bbb4_b.jpgj. eduardo segundo hernandez drawing the statue of belief by Eduardo Segundo, en Flickr

It's amazing!
Status before coloring the statue (when it's black and white.
Did you draw it? Or Did you make it with a 3D program?