One drawing, step-by-step

Kirk · #1 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 4:38 AM**

Hey y'all.

I just thought this might be kinda interesting for some of you. My latest drawing is of Cosco Tower in Hong Kong (my first from Hong Kong!). Every time I finished a session of drawing, I saved an intermediate GIF. The result was 14 steps showing how the drawing progressed. For those of you who are curious, here we go!

Thanks for comin!

Sher · #2 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 5:01 AM**

Wow! Great! Really beautiful!

Kelvin · #3 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 11:28 AM**

One could also reference that article you wrote regarding some of the particular methods used at each stage.

GuyedGuy · #4 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 11:42 AM**

wow, better than mine ill admit... how do people get that "glassy" effect to their drawings?

Kirk · #5 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 3:10 PM**

For me, it's all about the airbrush (this is a tool in Paintshop Pro, in Photoshop I think it's called the spraycan). Basically I colour the windows with a base colour, which is sort of the darkest they can be. Then I liberally spray highlights using the airbrush in another layer (they would be a nearly white colour).

LMich · #6 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 3:28 PM**

That's a cool little tutorial, but it's not similar to anything I use to draw my buildings.

So you actually draw an outline of the building first? How do you fill in the white spaces without having to do each individually? This method is so foreign to me.

bcp · #7 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 4:31 PM**

any way you can do that as an animated gif? that's really cool!
thanks,
bcp

Kirk · #8 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 5:24 PM**

Yeah, I'll make it an animated GIF...I was supposed to do that but I forgot...

I'll have to do an updated article on my "method" as the old one seems to be lost. I use several layers in my drawings. You can see that once I start filling in the colour, I set the opacity of the outline layer to very low (10%). The lines are simply used as guides. They don't appear in the finished product.

For me, the most difficult and time-consuming part (as you can see) is determining the proper dimensions of all of the elements. That's why I do it in black and white. It's easier to just sketch our rough forms and make corrections along the way in black and white.

Kirk · #9 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 10:02 PM**

OK, here ya go then eh.

The animated version.

OK.

Buck · #10 Posted: **Sep 16, 2003, 11:50 PM**

That is awesome, Kirk!

Born Pure Philly · #11 Posted: **Sep 17, 2003, 12:08 AM**

Very cool Kirk

Jared · #12 Posted: **Sep 17, 2003, 2:35 AM**

nice animation!

Taylordaman · #13 Posted: **Sep 17, 2003, 3:00 AM**

wow...

Cliff · #14 Posted: **Sep 17, 2003, 11:10 AM**

Wow! Very interesting, looks like theres lots of calculation involved.

GuyedGuy · #15 Posted: **Sep 17, 2003, 11:32 AM**

very nice way ofd drawing too, I tried it on my newest One Kansas City Place... I like it

M II A II R II K · #16 Posted: **Oct 9, 2003, 1:41 AM**

I imagine one step to speed up the drawing would be doing copying and pasting for the floors that look identical?

Kelvin · #17 Posted: **Oct 9, 2003, 1:52 AM**

Always remeber the "CMD"+"D" or "CTRL"+"D" option if you got it. That is usually the Duplicate command in most software systems - great for laying repetitive features of any kind!

M II A II R II K · #18 Posted: **Oct 12, 2003, 2:53 AM**

Thanx for the info! But sure it must take a whole lot of patience to draw these buildings!

nilz01 · #19 Posted: **Oct 12, 2003, 10:36 AM**

Great work Kirk!

sarcis · #20 Posted: **Oct 12, 2003, 2:15 PM**

Nice job Kirk, I like your Cosco Tower