Sketch of the week – get some perspective

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This week I got out of the house to do this sketch. It’s a little more complicated than the last couple, but I thought I would give a perspective scene a go. If you haven’t tried drawing something like a building, you might find that it’s not as hard as it seems. At least there are defined straight lines that give you structure to guide how you draw the scene. The trick is to know how much to leave out and how much to include.

Street scene building

A drawing of a building in a typical street near where I live

I always find the hardest part when starting a sketch like this is getting the outline down before you start adding any details. This is where I make decisions about how much of the shape of the building I will draw and if it will fit on my sketch pad. Often it’s a matter of taking a moment to look at the scene you are about to sketch, in this case I decided to only focus on the building on the corner and let the other building to the right be of secondary importance. I cover this aspect of sketching from real life in my book Creative Reboot. People often mistake being able to draw well to a gift, but in fact sketching from life is as much about close observation as it is about drawing lines in the right way.

Once I had a basic outline of the roof and walls, I started on filling some of the main internal details like the awning and window shapes, once again I didn’t add much detail to these shapes yet. I moved on to adding the mouldings and the window/wall details below the awning.

The final stage was adding the details in the windows, including the moulding and the shape of the building to the right.

Have you tried to sketch buildings before?