New York New York
A City in Marks: Chaz Newton-Smith’s Hand-Drawn New York
In today’s world of speed and automation, Chaz Newton-Smith’s way of working feels refreshingly different. Eight years ago, after losing a part-time job as a youth worker—a role he valued—Newton-Smith found himself at a turning point. Trained as an artist but long working outside the studio, redundancy gave him something rare: time. He used it to dive fully into his art.
One of the first major works from this new chapter is his digital drawing of New York City. Made entirely by hand in Adobe Draw (now Adobe Fresco), the piece looks almost photographic at first glance. The wide city view stretches across the skyline, leading the eye toward the Empire State Building. It’s the New York so many artists—Edward Hopper among them—have tried to capture: vast, restless, and alive.
But look closer, and the illusion changes. What first appeared as photographic detail becomes a web of marks, each placed one by one with Newton-Smith’s finger, long before the Apple Pencil existed. Layered and angled, the marks reveal a very different city—one built not from pixels, but from patience and human touch.
The drawing took over 100 hours to complete, a marathon of focus that echoes the energy of New York itself. Every building, every shadow, every reflective surface was drawn by hand. Because the work is a vector, it can be printed at any size—from a postcard to a billboard—without losing its detail or intimacy.
When Newton-Smith shared the piece on Twitter, it caught attention quickly. Adobe, including the lead developer of Adobe Draw, reached out to ask how he had achieved it with their tools. It was a small but telling moment: proof that even in the fast churn of digital art, patience and vision still stand out.
From his base in Stockport, England, Newton-Smith joins a long line of artists drawn to New York’s architecture as both subject and metaphor. His New York is not a glossy postcard and not a gritty cliché. Instead, it’s alive with contrasts—the monumental and the human, the overwhelming scale of the city and the fragile marks that hold it together.
At a time when AI can generate a cityscape in seconds, Newton-Smith’s drawing feels almost radical. It reminds us that both cities and works of art are made the same way: one mark at a time.
