Hi Tom, here, with this week,’s Circle Line Art School video in this video I’ll show you one way to draw buildings using a one-point perspective. The first step in perspective is to draw a horizontal line and, for a one-point perspective, we need to draw a mark or a cross on that horizon.
All vertical lines will stay vertical, but the sides of the buildings that go away from us if they are parallel, will all meet at this one vanishing point on the right, so we can draw a series of rectangles for the front of the buildings and then the Sides of all of these buildings because they’re all in parallel. The sides of all of these buildings will go to our vanishing point for this drawing. We need three rectangles in a row if we draw a vertical line between the diagonal lines that go to the vanishing point we can choose where the edge of each of the buildings are to find the shape of a pitched roof.
We just need to draw a middle line above one of the sides of the buildings, and then we can use this middle line to make a triangle. The top part of this roof that we’re drawing will be parallel to the front of the building. As we are looking straight at it, we’re not looking sideways. We’re just looking straight at it now. We can match the angle of the first triangle here, but then, because his building is on the left is higher.
We need to find the right side of the building first and to do that. Just draw a line from the corner top corner of the building. All the way to the vanishing point, then, for the top-left bit of the roof. That will be diagonal and it will sort of be in line with a triangle that we can draw at the front of the building on the left. If we draw a large triangle at the top of the rectangle on the left, we can again find the diagonal line to this shape by drawing a line from the top of the triangle to our vanishing point, and this will find the angle of the roof.
In one-point perspective as it goes away from us now, if we find the side of this building using the vanishing point at the base, we can now draw an archway in this wall in the foreground at the front of the drawing and then just darken the Lines of the building that we can see through the archway, we can draw another line on the left of the arch because we can see the thickness of arches and the thickness of windows on the left hand, side of all of the windows and doors in this.
Drawing now behind this building, we can draw another building. I think I’ll make this into a tower again finding the side of the tower by using our vanishing point at this stage. It would help to raise the horizon line a bit now, as we no longer need the horizon line, the horizontal line, as it goes through the buildings. We no longer need that bit so just to raise that, and then we can join up the lines that we’ve had two erase as they cross the horizon line, and we can make all of our lines a bit. Darker too, we could add a door of some steps in front of it.
Now again the sides of the steps, the parts of the steps to go towards the right. Those lines will all follow. Diagonal paths to our vanishing point, so we’re going to use the vanishing point for all of the sides of all of the shapes that go to the right. So we can use the vanishing point to find the inside corners the thickness of each of our windows. We could add a pyramid shape to the top of the tower just with some triangles and then above the wall of the courtyard, the front wall. We could draw another building just slightly higher with a pitched roof. We could add a chimney to this roof too.
For the top of the tower, we could add a flag to get a flag, so it looks like it has a little fold in it. Just draw an S shape at the bottom and then copy the S shape at the top line of the flag as well. We could sketch in a road and some pavement areas and maybe some blocks of trees and bushes. We don’t need any details. Just a sketch and then we could add a line of clouds which sort of goes behind some of the buildings.
So if something goes behind the buildings that will make the buildings seem like they’re coming forward, because the clouds will be behind them rather than just the clouds being above them once the line. Drawing is, as you’d wish it to be. We could add some tonal values – some shading, I’ll start by adding a soft tonal value to the top area above the line of clouds. So the sky is going to be slightly darker in tone than the clouds once we’ve got this and made it nice and soft. With a soft tone, we could find an even paler tone to shade, in the left hand, side of the clouds, so that would mean that the light is coming from the right because the clouds are going to have shadows on the left. Next, we can just block in the darker tonal values that we need in this drawing so some of the bushes. We could just choose one or two different tonal values for the bushes and trees and then inside the windows.
I think I will make those dark tones and the sides of the building all of the sides that we’re. Looking straight on to the left hand, sides of the building, we could make those a mid-tone as well, and then, once we’ve done that we could add some indications of some details. I don’t think you need too many details and definitely, details are best to put in towards the end of the drawing you get. The big shapes in the first sort of planning it out and then add a few details that are a good way of doing it. Thank you very much for watching this video. It’s episode 287 of my how-to draw video that I make for my Circle Line Art School. I post a new video every Saturday. Please visit my website, www CircleLineArtSchool com, to learn more about drawing and to learn how you can join Circle line. Art School.
Thank you for watching and see you next time.
