How To Draw Buildings In Simple Steps: For Beginners

Drawing architectural structures is a fun way to hone your artistic skills. Drawing a house is pretty common, so why not learn how to draw buildings instead? After all, everyone appreciates bustling urban scenery with high-rise skyscrapers. By learning How to draw Buildings in Simple Steps, you’ll have captivating artwork featuring city views right at your fingertips. Drawing architecture can make for fascinating art, especially if you follow Building Drawing Tutorial for Beginners for composition, perspective and process.

How To Draw Buildings In Simple Steps

How To Draw Buildings In Simple Steps: For Beginners

1 Get Inspired

The best thing you can do before you start drawing architecture is to have a look at other artwork featuring buildings, especially if you’re new to the topic and not quite convinced it’s for you. Much like with Still Lifes, sometimes it just takes an open mind and a bit of research to find that something you usually don’t consider can make for a super interesting subject. So, before you dive deeper into the topic why not take a half-hour or so and have a look at some fantastic architecture drawings and paintings? You could go through the works of your favourite artists, quite often they have found at least some buildings worth their time. Van Gogh, da Vinci, Picasso, all of them will have something nice for you to study.

2 Pick a Subject That Speaks To You

As mentioned above, architecture is a very broad term and encompasses a great many types of buildings and designs. Not everyone will take a liking to every style, and that’s perfectly fine. With a bit of patience and an open mind you’re sure to find something you can’t wait to get on paper. All you need to do is have a little wander. When planning How to draw Buildings in Simple Steps, find something that speaks to you, with no regard to what you think is the correct building to choose. If you like castles and English cottages in the snow, go for it. If you prefer glassy skyscrapers or iron bridges sure thing, sketch away.

3 Create an Interesting Composition

Since architecture is usually designed to be symmetrical drawing it from an angle can help your final work to look less flat and more interesting. You could walk around your building and see if there is a particular view that will just be perfect for your next masterpiece. Do always keep an eye on the background as well, as that can have a strong effect on a composition. There is no rule that you have to draw the entire building. You could draw just a few windows, some brickwork a bit of roof and a tower, that’s entirely up to you. Whatever interests you the most is what you should go for.

4 Decide On a Style

If you like to experiment, it can be great fun to try out different materials and find the one that can best portray the particular kind of architecture you are drawing. For example, a subtle coat of watercolour might work well with delicate Japanese temples, scratchy charcoal would be great for a wooden cabin and a neat pen could be good to portray a glass skyscraper. Even the most ordinary building can make for a fascinating sketch if the artist uses an interesting angle or medium. You can follow your usual style, or you can use an approach that reflects the kind of architecture you chose to portray, or even just your mood of the day. If you would like to relay a specific message, be it philosophical or political, think about how you can best do so with the materials you selected. Naturally,  when looking for Building Drawing Tutorial for Beginners, there are also no rules stating that you have to use the colour that reflects reality. For some absolutely breathtaking examples of good architecture art and impressive use of medium versus building, the style has a look at the work of Malaysian artist Ch’ng Kiah Kiean.

5 Work Out The Perspective

Once you’ve decided on a subject, medium, style and view you’ll want to work out what perspective rules you’ll need to apply in order to draw it correctly. Of course it helps if you know a little about perspective. The easiest way to work out the perspective of a subject from your point of view is to make a quick thumbnail sketch or check out How to draw Buildings in Simple Steps online; like the kind you did to work out the composition. Just sketch your building very roughly and find where the horizon line is or would be, if it’s not visible). Then look for convergence lines and vanishing points. Are you dealing with one-point, two-point or multi-point perspectives? Is there any atmospheric perspective? Are any parts of your subject overlapping other parts? You can also use your pencil to sight-size, to roughly measure the height or width of one element of your drawing and compare it to other parts to work out the proportions. E.g. the door might fit five times into the height of the house, making it easier for you to draw it.

6 Draw The Main Structure

Once you’ve worked out the above points which might take a while or it might be a very fast process, you can begin with your final piece. Good thing you’ve already done that thumbnail sketch and know roughly where your horizon and vanishing points (VPs) are located, because that’s what you’ll be drawing first. Mind you, the VPs won’t always be on the page, depending on the kind of perspective used. However, it’s still important to have a rough idea which direction they are and how far away. You can check out Building Drawing Tutorial for Beginners where you can use very thin lines for your basic structure means they won’t be noticeable in the final work or it’s easier to erase them. When you’re done you can start adding in the main shapes of your subject, such as the rough outlines of a house or the direction the street is running. You can use your horizon line and VPs to work out the convergence lines that’ll act as guides to get the angles right.

7 Divide The Big Shapes Into Smaller Shapes

This is where your sketch begins to take form, where things start to look like what you’re actually drawing. When you’ve got your basic, big shapes down, correct them where needed, then divide them into smaller shapes. For instance when you check out How to draw Buildings in Simple Steps you will find that for a standard house that would mean adding in the roof, the position of the windows and doors. You’ll also want to start indicating large objects like trees, fences, cars or background shapes. Use the vanishing points as guides as long as you need them, they’ll help you confirm what you think you see and figure out how far your eye can be trusted. Of course you can also always use your pencil to measure angles with an outstretched arm. When you divide very complex subjects into smaller shapes, such as Greek temples with all those columns or Gothic cathedrals with their elaborate ceilings, add some rough detail as you go along. That might be a person at the foot of a column or a stem of ivy curling around a small part of it. It’ll work as an anchor point and prevent you forgetting where in your subject these lines and shapes were and get all confused with the complexity of it.

8 Add Interest With Detail

As always, the final step is to make your work look all pretty. When the basic structure stands, you know where everything is and you’re sure the perspective is correct. Then you can start adding in some detail to make the drawing or painting special. Here you can add in the shading and all those smaller shapes that you will find when looking for Building Drawing Tutorial for Beginners. You can add interest to your work, such as window shutters, chimneys, door knockers, people, bushes, clouds. In rougher sketches, you can easily make some stylistic adaptions yourself, even if drawing from imagination isn’t your forte. You can add some texture, if you want, like brickwork, woodwork, leaves, reflections and so on. And now is the time when you go all out with the paints, if you chose to use any.

 

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