Let's Start!

Warming Up

Let's Unleash Your Inner Artist!

"But I can't draw a straight line" - bad excuse, you don't have to. And, if you need perfect straight lines you can use a straight edge as a guide.

These two examples of architectural illustrations were drawn without perfectly straight lines.

This is a "Stylized" approach to drawing buildings which means your finished artwork is not realistic (a true portrayal of a subject as in a photo) but loose with artistic flair. We don't have to be perfect and exact here!

It's time to engage our Brains with some warm-up exercises

Grab a pencil (with 3B or 2B graphite-see tools) and some tracing paper.

Start scribbling some vertical lines. Use your whole arm pivoting from the elbow and not from the wrist as in the example. Work fast, neatness does not count.

When you draw with broad strokes you want to use your whole lower arm and when you draw small details you want to draw from the wrist (which is what we are more used to).

The arm approach will take some getting used to, but it will give you speed as well as looseness.

Now draw some circles and ellipses (egg shapes).

For those who doodle a lot--does this seem familiar? That's because this expression comes naturally, without much thought. This is the mind set you want. Do these exercises several times.

Now draw some other 2 dimensional (flat) shapes, like squares, rectangles, triangles, etc.

Finally, draw some 3 dimensional shapes like cubes, cones, pyramids & cylinders. If you need references, look at a shoe box, soda can or funnel. There are samples of 3D objects all around.

I bet you didn't know you had it in you! Look, you have created the basic shapes that exist in Architecture. You've learned much young Jedi--but your training has just begun. Are you ready to go on? You bet!

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