The beginnings of a no-name town

Step 1; lay the town out
Step 2; design the buildings
Step 3; combine Step 1 & 2 for town
(currently I'm still on step 2)



I'm drawing all this stuff, of course, because it's all leading up to a larger project, but also just to get better at drawing. That's the big picture. That's been the main goal for a very long time; always try to better myself at this stuff. So I try not to take shortcuts. Whenever I draw something, it's pretty much always with that in mind. So, when I started to draw this gas station/auto shop, I wanted to use everything I could to get the distances and proportions as best I could (just as good a time as any to practice, right?). So I drew the entire building, not just what you could see, for architectural practice. I tried to make what I'm talking about easier to see with the red.
So, I'm scanning all this finished stuff in, and I see an early scan of the pencil for this and it strikes me as mind blowing. I mean, first of all, all that work for something you know is just going to be covered up/not seen. If you look at the finished one and then the pencil, it's so much more complicated than you would have thought. So I'm staring at it, and I start to realize something. Other people usually just draw what you can see. I mean, if you're gonna draw a cardboard box, you don't start with what's inside. but... it's like it's really there. There are really walls that make a room behind there. It's exactly like the physical world; there are really things behind other things, you just can't see them for the things in front of them. I don't know. I don't expect anyone to know what I'm talking about. It's just one of those late night trippy thoughts.
Also, I should probably stop drawing things that aren't there. It's weird. It's weird and it's time consuming.