The Purple Line is a lite rail currently under construction in Maryland that will extend from Bethesda to New Carrollton and provide direct connections to the DC metrorail. Many of the proposed stations are located in suburban areas, leading to a strong community presence throughout the design process. The first series of conceptual renders brought to public hearings were photo-realistic and led to confusion among the attendees. Due to the style of the renders, many of the community members understood them to mean the station designs had already been finalized before consultation with residents of the affected neighborhoods.

​

In response to this, I was asked to create new renders that emphasized the conceptual nature of the stations. By approaching them as hand-drawn illustrations it became easier to view the stations as designs still in the early stages of development. The process used for each of the images was a multi-layered construction created both digitally and by hand. The pen linework was drawn using views of the 3D modeled infrastructure and Google Street View screenshots of the site. After scanning the sketches, coloring was added digitally inside Adobe Photoshop.