Trust the process. With certain things, I believe that you just have to stick to the process and you will get through. Before SCA I wanted to be an architect for two very simple reasons. My dad is an architect and I have decent drawing skills. It really was these 2 simple things and nothing else. Because of that I was a little unsure, but I still wanted to give it a go. I started to build up a portfolio although I didn’t have much confidence in myself. I wanted to talk about how making this decision led to one of my favourite pieces of work that I have created.

It really wasn’t easy. Before starting this portfolio. My work was really random. I basically did drawings of whatever came to me at the moment I was holding the pen. Most of the time my work ended up looking like something fictional. When I started my portfolio I had no clue about what to draw. All I knew was that I had to do architecture-related work. I tried doing what I can, but at one point I got lost and went to my art teacher for some advice. He told me to find some inspiration. He also knew that I liked to do more surreal drawings, so he suggested I look at an artist called Piranesi. Piranesi is an old artist who did architectural drawings, but what was interesting about this artist was that he created these amazing architectural environments that didn’t exist. They were where imaginary. He had such a good understanding of forms, it made his drawings look like they were observational.

Piranesi gave me inspiration and I knew what kind of work I wanted to create, but it was so hard to create these structures just from imagination. That’s when I thought of an idea. What if the forms for this drawing I was gonna create weren’t fully out of imagination and where the creativity came in was how these forms worked together?

Piranesi was an artist from 1700 so, his drawings were usually old dungeons and castles. I took my camera and went to this castle in Istanbul which was built in 1453. I took photos of all the interesting structures and printed them out. I cut out the structures and started creating collages out of these structures until I found the best layout. Once I found my favourite layout I started drawing what I saw on the collage. The outcome became one of my favourite drawings that I have created and helped me to gain a better understanding of how to draw architectural form which helped me a lot with the rest of my portfolio.

This process taught me a lot. I had no confidence in building up this portfolio. Looking back at it now, the process of this drawing reminds me of some of the briefs here at SCA. Searching for dots, sticking to your instincts, and really pushing yourself until you are satisfied with the outcome.

@alicenanuras