My name is Vi.

I'm an artist based in Brooklyn. Drawing has always been a passion, and most of my work over the 25 years I've been in New York has centered around pen and ink and architecture.

I started in architecture, but design pulled me toward New York, where I worked as an art director and eventually a creative director at agencies around the city. That world taught me economy of message — knowing what to keep and what to cut, where the eye should go. It also surrounded me with talented photographers, illustrators, and film directors who showed me what craft actually looks like. I trained in classical drawing too — how to see form and mass before you see surface, like the old masters. That's the foundation under everything I draw now.

Most of what I do is looking.

I'll spend a long while with a block before I decide what I'm actually drawing, looking for the right angle, the right light.

I love ink for its permanence, and at the same time its spontaneity. There's no undo, no going back, so you have to make a decision in the moment. Each line becomes a record of being present.

Why I made this course.

For years people have asked me some version of the same questions. What pens. What paper. How do you know where to start when there's so much detail? How long does one drawing take?

The tools are the easy answer. What actually matters is the order you work in and what you choose to leave out — essentially, what you choose to see. The time I've spent with architecture, the years in agencies, the classical study, and two and a half decades living in this city all shaped my approach to those questions.

Fine Lines is the long answer. The whole process, in sequence, on the subjects I know best.

I hope it does one thing for you: gets you drawing regularly, and looking at your own city a little more closely.