William Cook was commissioned by the Viewpoint School to map its long, thin, not-yet completed campus, situated on the Santa Monica Valley floor.  William shares the highlights of what was actually a six-week process of visual building and controlled rule-breaking to arrive at the deceptively natural finish you see here. 

To begin, a Google Earth shot was carefully selected to show the best view of the campus. The elevation is perfect--everything will show up just fine, but the football program is overshadowing the academic program due to perspective; it will have to be altered.

Next, William roughs in the major compositional adjustments while showing how the map will ultimately fall on the printed page. “Things have been pushed, prodded and lovingly caressed into this state rapidly, with absolutely no attention to detail… I think of it as a thumbnail where all the major stuff comes together.”      

Next, establishing the footprint of all of the buildings and campus features:

Out of these footprints will "grow" each of the buildings using the many ground shots William gathered during his site visit, as well as architectural renderings of the future buildings.  Some minor tweaking with the football field perspective further refines the composition.

In addition to the actual buildings in position, the hills around the campus are being suggested.  This is what makes this campus unique: these hills are most famous in that all the old westerns were filmed here.  Hollywood is not that far away…

The final illustration underway, featuring a duotone pen and ink effort in black, and then brown ink, a sort of grasailles translation into the ink media.  “I feel it is the perfect underwork for coloring, in that all the primaries are already represented,” remarks William. “A colored black ink drawing seems inadequate, and does not feel right to me.”

From there he went right to the coloring--very sharp Prismacolor pencil points.  

And finally, the illustration is complete.  “Six weeks, a really cool trip, lots of friendly banter, instinct, art and lovin’ life.   Had a blast start to finish, I hope that shows.”