City Drawings: Learn How We Create Our Cityscapes

For over five years, The City Works have created intricate city drawings from around the world. Whether for their souvenir collections or for their clients, every city they make is completely unique.


🤔 The Idea

All our city drawings start with an idea. When deciding which city to draw, the size of the city, the landmarks and architectural styles all make a difference to how the drawing will look. Furthermore, there are endless possibilities to the size, shape and colour of the final piece.

Once the concept is finalised, a vast body of research is built. Although not considered, it takes a lot of time and concentration. It’s important to make sure all the key landmarks are included, while keeping balance to the design.

Because seeing a city is so important, most research is undertaken by visiting the city first-hand when possible. These travels are backed up by online research, with maps used to understand the geography of the city.


Hand drawn cities
Freedom to Exist Clock tower illustration by The City Works
Handmade city drawings – Working on our project for a watch company

✏️ Pencil Time

Next, we sketch! For each project, we draft a number of sketches. This is to understand the best layout for the final city drawing. An example can be seen above, when working on our project for watch company Freedom to Exist.

Afterwards, we begin the process known as ‘vectoring’. This involves compositing our sketches using Adobe Photoshop. This creates the final layout. Using Adobe Illustrator, the sketch is then digitised.


Creating city drawings using Adobe Illustrator

🔍 All In The Detail

To create the ideal design, we adjust the stroke thickness, colour and scale of the image. If there’s something we’re not happy with, it can be easily changed.

We then use a magnifying glass to check all of our city drawings. We make sure there are no little mistakes anywhere. Such as overlapping or crossing lines.

The finished article has a lot of time put into it. But it’s always worth it. Many people like our cities so much, we make them into a range of prints for your wall.


Venice Blockprint by The City Works

If you’re a fan of our city drawings, and would like one of your own, you can purchase them from our online shop. If you’d like something more bespoke, please get in touch with us via email, or using the contact form below.



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