Hi! I make this thread for everyone to share how we improved the drawings over time. I think it's a cool way to see some of the thechniques we acquired along with all the drawings that we have made. You can post here if you want to share your improvements.
I will start with a bit of me, you may not know me as illustrator because I only draw for Mexico (for the moment), mainly for my own city, which its diagram is almost entirely drawn by me.
I discovered this page some years ago when I was 13, in the year 2020. By that age I started to think more about my future and found that I like all the things related to architecture and engineering. I used to pay more attention to my surroundings in terms of buildings, I found that in my city were way more buildings than I thought. This because I live in a city (Veracruz) of about 540k inhabitants (city proper) and 890k (metro area), so in terms of Mexico this is not a large city, but neither a small, more like a medium to medium-large. That's why I wasn't expecting the number of highrises here, even with that, my city's metro area is the 6° with the most buildings over 100m in the country. This made me want to have something like a database to know and have the data of every building.
That's when this page came up. In the first time I saw that there were actually quite a good quantity of buldings of my city already added, but the bad part was that they were missing diagrams and some other buildings, along with mistaken heights/floors/status. After that, I discovered that everyone can request changes and additions for the database, so this, with the drawings, were the things that I liked the most.
With the fact that we were still during the pinnacle of the global pandemic, I decided to start to draw and add stuff here because I didn't have anything else to do but stay at home. When I began, the drawings that I was making were incredible for me, but now, I see they are obsolete and can do better. That's how this idea came up for me. Currently I'm still not an excellent illustrator, but I know that I have improved since my first drawing. I also expect your feedback if you can, I want to improve.
This is the tallest building of my city (it displays the "wrong" city because of what I posted in
this thread)
![](https://i.imgur.com/v9eOD1t.png)
I was experimenting with a good curtain wall reflections and illumination with opaque glass.
This is the future tallest building in Mexico
![](https://i.imgur.com/ROf4CJL.png)
I added more depth and shadows to the drawings. Also tried with simulating inside occupation with different lights/curtains in the inside. This is my personal favorite glass building I have drawn.
This is the evolution of both: My drawings quality and the building designs.
![](https://i.imgur.com/83OB0xZ.png)
This shows how I learned shadows and all that stuff.
Here's how I improved the curves, from pixelated form to a smooth one.
Some of my first drawings
My latest drawings (well there are still more but they are awaiting approval)
![](https://i.imgur.com/SW6drBP.png)
You can see some differences between them, this because I'm still learning and testing different thechniques/methods. That's why some drawings look good and some other are better to keep them deleted
![Ha ha](images/smilies/haha.gif)
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To finish, my goal now is to complete the entire Mexico database and do some other drawing and addition with the rest of Latin America. But I know this will be really difficult because only for Mex there are still 1566 buildings requiring a drawing, not counting the ones that are not added so it is way more than that and because I need to wait for an editor to add/edit one which I understand it because it also takes time to me to research. And the fact that right now there are only 2 active illustrators (not counting myself) that make drawings for the country (Martin H Unzon and Urbaner44). I will try my best to fill the database with draws and data.
Feel free to share your drawings and how you developed skills over time!