Since the development of drawing techniques and geometric projections in the Renaissance, architectural drawing has been the most relevant tool to mediate in the design process. Alberti’s conception of architectural representation and project anticipated in a practical way the idea of notational systems developed centuries later by Goodman. Thus, architects replaced master builders’ professional tradition and gained the recognition for architecture as a liberal art and as a creative endeavour. Their ability to project and represent architecture anticipating not only its visual appearance but also its geometric constitution through drawing introduced a substantial change, allowing architects to convey their design to third parties due to the allographic nature of architectural drawing. This research attempts to focus on these issues in relation to ideation processes and graphic thinking derived from architects’ drawing practice, questioned by some with the advent of digital tools. Sketches have been used by architects to establish a dialogue between them and their architectural creative labour which, to some extent, is triggered by the action of drawing itself. These freehand sketches are based on projections but the looseness and inaccuracy of them renders a degree of openness which is seminal within the architectural design process. These drawings are transformed into presentation drawings during the design process to reach a final form. The second type of drawings properly represent architecture in a more precise and notational way. These two types of drawings could be referred to as ‘imaginative’ and ‘notational’ in accordance to their different features, despite they are related to the same architectural referent. Yet, every phase in the project is creative as the project defines and anticipates built architecture.