Brian Droste, a 2010 graduate of the School of Architecture, was recently named the winner in the nonprofessional category of Architectural Record’s third annual Cocktail-Napkin Sketch Contest. A jury of the magazine’s editors evaluated nearly 1,000 napkins and chose winners and three runners-up in the categories: professional, nonprofessional, and best firm. Droste, an intern architect at Wight & Company in Chicago, says his time at the Rome Studies Program, where he was introduced to “light-and-shadow drawing,” was the inspiration for his sketch. Droste drew architect Bertrand Goldberg’s 1964 Marina City, a mixed-use residential and commercial building on Chicago’s State Street. Droste says he liked “the way light bounces across the buildings, emphasizing petal-like forms.” Droste says he completed his sketch in about 10 minutes using a fountain pen. “The pen bleeds so quickly—it makes you go so much faster,” Droste says. “You have to commit and not go back, almost like a watercolor.”
