Meet Nora Ellison

I remembered the rooms, not the postcards.

Laventris — Observe • Structure • Illuminate

Hi, I’m Nora, the founder of LAVENTRIS. I started drawing interiors because rooms were the part of a place I remembered most clearly: the chair beside a borrowed window, the narrow table in a temporary flat, the late-afternoon shadow crossing a familiar wall.

Everything I make now comes from one question — what do I actually need to draw for this room to feel like itself?

Nora Ellison, founder of LAVENTRIS, beside a window with her sketchbook.

Nora Ellison · Founder & writer

How it started

Three rooms I kept going back to.

Not one of them was remarkable. They stayed with me because of a single arrangement of shapes and light, and because I had sat in them long enough to notice.

The chair beside a borrowed window A flat that was not mine, and the one seat where the light arrived first.

The narrow table in a temporary flat Too small for anything but a cup, a notebook and a vase that leaned.

The late-afternoon shadow The same wall every day, redrawn for twenty minutes by the sun.

What kept going wrong

My early sketches tried to capture everything, and usually lost the room.

I drew the skirting board, the pattern on a cushion and every book on a shelf, and somehow the space itself disappeared underneath all of it.

Too soon

I began with details before the room had any proportions to hold them.

Too much

Everything was drawn at the same weight, so nothing looked important.

Too tight

By the time I noticed the drawing had drifted, I was too far in to correct it.

The change

I started simplifying instead.

First the largest shapes, then the perspective, then only the objects and colours that gave the space its character. That order is still the whole method.

01
The largest shapes firstFloor, wall, window, the big piece of furniture. If those are wrong, nothing after them can be right.
02
Then the structureEye level and one honest vanishing point, enough to make the depth believable without turning the page into a technical exercise.
03
Then only what gives it characterThe chair with the tilted seat, the lamp, the one colour that says which hour it is. Everything else can stay out.

One room, drawn in the order I still use

Nora Ellison drawing an interior, pencil held at arm’s length to compare proportions.

Nora Ellison · At the desk

What this is, and what it is not

An honest memory of a place.

Keeping those pages taught me that an interior drawing does not need to be technically perfect to hold a real memory of a room.

You do not need

Architectural training
Expensive materials
A perfect hand
Hours of free time

You do need

One manageable view
A pencil and a page
The patience to look first
Permission to leave things out

What I wrote

Four guides, in the order I learned them.

LAVENTRIS organises interior sketching into small, practical decisions so you can look more carefully, draw with less pressure and keep a personal record of the spaces around you.

Sketch the Room You See Observation, Proportion & Confident First Lines Choose one view you can manage, compare the proportions and place the biggest shapes before any detail arrives.
Perspective Made Practical One-Point, Two-Point & Everyday Interiors Eye level, corners, doors, stairs — and how to correct a drawing that feels wrong instead of abandoning the page.
Furniture, Objects & Details Draw Chairs, Tables, Shelves & Lived-In Spaces The volumes and angles that hold a chair together, and how to group objects without turning the room into clutter.
Light, Colour & Atmosphere Bring Interior Sketches to Life Three clear values, honest cast shadows and a limited palette that keeps morning, evening and lamplight apart.

In one line

“Draw the room you are actually in, not the one you think you should be able to draw.”

Nora Ellison Founder & writer

An honest note None of my guides promise a perfect architectural rendering or a particular level of skill. They teach a way of looking and a set of small exercises; how far it takes you depends on how often you sit down and draw.

Begin with the room in front of you