The shadows that the front balcony cast are really interesting because they define the shape of the surface they fall upon. By only painting the shadows I can describe what the building is like without having to paint anything else.
The other way that I add texture, as I mentioned before, is to use a photo overlay. This is a photo that I took of some concrete. Copy and paste your photo into a new layer in your illustration. Then take that layer and set it to “color burn” and set the opacity to 33%. Most of the time I set the layer to “overlay” but you can use different settings. Try them all out and see which one works the best in that situation. After adding the texture layer I always add a new layer and paint opaquely on top of it, that way you can integrate the texture into your painting more and it won’t look so alien.
