In this video, architect/illustrator James Akers demonstrates a shortcut for generating aerial and eye-level sketches from nothing more than a photo of a plan.

Digital drawing (e.g. Procreate) is here to stay, but how can architects and designers use it? It doesn't replace Rhino or Sketchup, but it does replace the tracing paper and pencil many of us learned with as young architects...and it does so elegantly, keeping all the best parts, but adding all the power of Photoshop and more: layers, speed, sharing. perspective assist. That's what the videos in this channel are all about: helping architects use digital drawing. Thanks for watching and please subscribe for more tutorials showing how architects and designers can use digital drawing to their great benefit.

(Author James Akers is a registered architect and architectural illustrator with over 25 years experience. His YouTube Procreate tutorial channel has thousands of subscribers (please join us!), and he provides both in-house and studio-based sketching and rendering—what one might call "design stenography" services—to many of NYC's and Boston’s leading architects.)