Winner

The jury picked as “the best in show” a drawing of a gate from a Japanese garden by Truc Dang Manh Nguyen, an architect from Piedmont, California. The winner has practiced for 27 years and recently opened his own office. He prefers sketching to photographing buildings. “It forces the eye to focus and the mind to work,” he says, “and it’s easier to commit a work of architecture to memory through drawing.” Nguyen found the small size of the 5-inch-square cocktail napkin to be challenging, and confesses that this is the first time he actually tried to sketch on a cocktail napkin.

View the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest main page.